Okay well its been two days since the opening of the sign up sheet and how many people signed up…0. Que triste! I made sure to go out of my way to talk some of the people I new from the surrounding towns to have them pasa la voz (spread the word). So I will continue from the last time I wrote.
For New Years me and some of the other volunteers went to the beach. It was a good time, but not as relaxing as I had hoped*. And now I’m back to the grind getting a few things done for the artisans. My basic goals for the next month is to start a computer class for the artisan groups in the area, register all the artisans from my association and/or town in the records of the Regional Government, continue and implement the product codes with my association, start the product catalogue for a rival association (we’ll see how that pans out when Martha finds out lol), and to organize a filing cabinet (archivador) for the association. Probably only 2 of the above will get done, I’m being optimistic. It’s not that it just won’t get done, its just that everything gets put off for “tomorrow”, or “the next week”, or “…just after I finish this”. Extremely frustrating when I know it wouldn’t take that long and also I will be working on increasing and better or materials of promotion, business cards, catalogues and banners. This too is a bit frustrating because my assoc doesn’t want to put in that much money into the promo materials, but it needs to be done to look professional. Also I think I have to do some fundraisers with the association and track the funding… I’m not accusing anyone, but money seems to be disappearing…
All the while pushing for these “Jovenes Emprendedores” classes to be successful. I know it seems like random amount of stuff, but this all needs to get done, though I don’t know if it will, because it needs two parties to accomplish things. In good news though, Camp ALMA (Actividades liderazco para mujeres adolescantes) Leadership activities for adolescent women, will be this up coming weekend and should prove to be successful. Two girls from Pedregal will attend and hopefully listen and put to use the information that will be presented. Speakers will be discussing themes like, self esteem, stereo types, breaking the glass ceiling, machista, Si se puede (yes you can), motivation, Querer es poder. This should be very educational for the girls.Two speakers though just dropped out yesterday so I’m kinda freaking out because that is my job so today I think I’m going to visit the municipality of Piura to try and persuade the mayor (who is a woman, of course) to come in and do a speech. We shall see…
Okay I have to head into Catacaos and Piura about now, but hopefully all of you have had a great week and will have a nice January. Sorry about those videos if anyone knows how I can download them that would be extremely helpful, I think the file is too big or something. I might have to start using Youtube.
I’ll keep you updated..
Much love xoxo ekh
Thursday, January 8, 2009
6 de enero 2009
Happy New Year!! Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season! Missed you all incredibly as you all probably missed me therefore as I suspected, none of you had fun nor smiled from Thanksgiving till January 2. I know, I know, life just does not go on without me. I don’t fault you for not trying; I personally don’t think you should move on and should just wallow and cry for the remaining year and a half that I will be gone. … okay I guess that was enough, though I could go on for about ohhhh another page and a half.
Okay so I haven’t written in a minute, that’s not acceptable, I am aware of that, I have just been really busy. What’s new you ask? Well I shall cuentate, I went to the Christmas fair right before Christmas in Lima. The fair was horrible, the time I spent in the wonderful, air conditioned with hot water embassy mcmansion was wonderful. The fair wasn’t horrible per se but it definitely wasn’t what it should have been considering it was held in Jockey Plaza, basically the main shopping place of all of Lima or Peru for that matter and it was during the prime shopping time of the week, fri sat and sun, not to mention the highest retailers sales time of year, Christmas season. (on average each store making 40% of their profit at this time) That was basically the set up of every artisan’s dream,right? Wrong. MYPE who held the fair, they are the business department of the Peru’s government, did no promotion, nada, nothing, zilch, zippo, if I could think of another synonym, I would. It was awful. The fair was basically dead on Friday; we had one sale to another vendor! Saturday picked up but nothing crazy probably only because the people in charge realized their faux-pa and started hard core pressing promotion in Jockey Plaza. Sunday was decent but it was def too little too late for many of the artisans who lost money, not selling enough to cover their gastos. Just awful. I def made a point to mention it to the people in charge, although they claimed to have promoted all month, highly impossible. Though I should give a little slack because this is their first annual Christmas fair, however I will make sure there is promotion before we waste our pasajes to go this upcoming year. So we did well making just about 700 soles so that helped out the ladies with costs for the holidays in their households. Though honestly being in that house making homecooked dinner every night and watching cable totally made the sitting in the same chairs for 10 hours in a fair where we barely sold, worth it!!!
I went into Piura to have Christmas Eve breakfast with one of my friends, Marian, who was in town and alone without her host family until later that night. Christmas Eve night was great I did put a clip up but its like 3 secs, I know, I have the longer one but it keeps getting stuck before I upload it all. Also, I did make a Christmas greetings for all of you but that is having issues posting as well, got to love developing technology here! Hopefully I’ll get it to download by Easter! Christmas Eve is the big celebration here in Peru with hot chocolate and champagne at midnight and they have a ceremony of letting the guest of honor, this year me, putting baby Jesus in the nativity scene at midnight. Which I believe you all did see the clip of.
ON Christmas day, I continued the celebration with other volunteers in the area and heading to Colan, a beach town about a 1 45 minute ride from the city. Most of you have probably scene the wonderful beach pictures I put up on facebook, this would be explaining where that is!! It was a really nice time. Then heading back to site I started my promo for the Jovenes Emprendedores classes that I will be starting this week. I am really excited about this and I hope it works out this time. If some of you remember I tried starting this class back in October but because I let someone in the municipality take of it I don’t think it got promoted well and being new then I didn’t question, this time, yours truly took over. I really want this class to be a hit with the kids that just graduated from secundaria and don’t have enough money to go into the institutes or university prep schools. IT gives them another outlet to getting pregnant and married at 16!! SO here’s to hoping!
Okay well I do have more to write but its 12 on a Tuesday night that’s never heard of for me in my normal routine so I think that’s enough craziness for me for one night… hopefully ill write soon
Xoxo
Elizabeth katherine
Okay so I haven’t written in a minute, that’s not acceptable, I am aware of that, I have just been really busy. What’s new you ask? Well I shall cuentate, I went to the Christmas fair right before Christmas in Lima. The fair was horrible, the time I spent in the wonderful, air conditioned with hot water embassy mcmansion was wonderful. The fair wasn’t horrible per se but it definitely wasn’t what it should have been considering it was held in Jockey Plaza, basically the main shopping place of all of Lima or Peru for that matter and it was during the prime shopping time of the week, fri sat and sun, not to mention the highest retailers sales time of year, Christmas season. (on average each store making 40% of their profit at this time) That was basically the set up of every artisan’s dream,right? Wrong. MYPE who held the fair, they are the business department of the Peru’s government, did no promotion, nada, nothing, zilch, zippo, if I could think of another synonym, I would. It was awful. The fair was basically dead on Friday; we had one sale to another vendor! Saturday picked up but nothing crazy probably only because the people in charge realized their faux-pa and started hard core pressing promotion in Jockey Plaza. Sunday was decent but it was def too little too late for many of the artisans who lost money, not selling enough to cover their gastos. Just awful. I def made a point to mention it to the people in charge, although they claimed to have promoted all month, highly impossible. Though I should give a little slack because this is their first annual Christmas fair, however I will make sure there is promotion before we waste our pasajes to go this upcoming year. So we did well making just about 700 soles so that helped out the ladies with costs for the holidays in their households. Though honestly being in that house making homecooked dinner every night and watching cable totally made the sitting in the same chairs for 10 hours in a fair where we barely sold, worth it!!!
I went into Piura to have Christmas Eve breakfast with one of my friends, Marian, who was in town and alone without her host family until later that night. Christmas Eve night was great I did put a clip up but its like 3 secs, I know, I have the longer one but it keeps getting stuck before I upload it all. Also, I did make a Christmas greetings for all of you but that is having issues posting as well, got to love developing technology here! Hopefully I’ll get it to download by Easter! Christmas Eve is the big celebration here in Peru with hot chocolate and champagne at midnight and they have a ceremony of letting the guest of honor, this year me, putting baby Jesus in the nativity scene at midnight. Which I believe you all did see the clip of.
ON Christmas day, I continued the celebration with other volunteers in the area and heading to Colan, a beach town about a 1 45 minute ride from the city. Most of you have probably scene the wonderful beach pictures I put up on facebook, this would be explaining where that is!! It was a really nice time. Then heading back to site I started my promo for the Jovenes Emprendedores classes that I will be starting this week. I am really excited about this and I hope it works out this time. If some of you remember I tried starting this class back in October but because I let someone in the municipality take of it I don’t think it got promoted well and being new then I didn’t question, this time, yours truly took over. I really want this class to be a hit with the kids that just graduated from secundaria and don’t have enough money to go into the institutes or university prep schools. IT gives them another outlet to getting pregnant and married at 16!! SO here’s to hoping!
Okay well I do have more to write but its 12 on a Tuesday night that’s never heard of for me in my normal routine so I think that’s enough craziness for me for one night… hopefully ill write soon
Xoxo
Elizabeth katherine
Monday, December 29, 2008
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
It's that time of year... christmas time is here
campanas with ribbon...my idea and the raw materials cost less but look nicer so we sell it for more and they sold out at the fair!!
one of the purses with the wooden asas(handles) ...only 20 soles ruffly 6 dollars!!
this is made with the tela that we got from Cajamarca and the wooden asas...40 soles...roughly 13 dollars!
oh the ways you can entertain yourself at a fair you are at for 10 hours a day!!! Haha this was among the various games of "throw the straw ball inside the sombrero - 1 point" game and the "how many straw balls can you juggle at once" game... yeh it was like that
another pic of the fair signs outside jockey plaza
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