what i'm doing these days

a few things i'm hoping to work on in the next few months:

- my buddy gonzalo and i applied to a fhi360/USAID sustainable tourism grant and were approved!  we'll be organizing a summer camp for private and public school kids to "develop potential" using the north of the country as a backdrop.  a lot of kids don't ever get to leave their region of the country, so it is hopefully helping to develop local tourism a bit.  we'll be working on that with a few other partner orgs over the next few months and hopefully implementing by august.
 
- i did a small needs assessment of the women's credit groups i've been working with for another ngo i work with and through that have learned they want a manual that actually explains how things work.  crazy idea huh? the more i talk to people though, i'm realizing that there is already a manual... it's just not being used apparently.  haha.  so i'll be working on developing that as well as creating a curriculum of financial literacy combined with basic business skills that each group will need to complete.  we'll probably have some cool certificate at the end that says they've completed it.

- i want to go to the beach.

- gonzalo also has a tour agency based here in somoto. he's probably my closest friend here in town. we're going to be working on several projects with him over the next few months to try and grow his business starting with customer service trainings for the guides he uses. then we'll work on an accounting system and a better marketing strategy.

- school classes start next week.

- i'm hoping to get connected with Plan International here in Somoto and start working with their monitoring and evaluation officer to help improve their community based monitoring systems. this is what i'm really interested in.

- i want to go to the beach.

- i'm working with another org started by a former pcv that does emergency preparedness stuff in the rural areas.  we also deliver cheap water filters that last up to five years to help reduce water-born illnesses. i specifically am working with the firefighters to help them start selling extra filters to anyone who is interested as a way to raise funds for the station.

- i'm working with my bosses from peace corps to work on re-doing the monitoring and evaluation plan for the biz program. i'm pretty excited about this, but it's a bunch of work.

- did i mention i want to go to the beach as much as possible?