Journal Entries Week 2: #1

Part A: Evaluation of the performance from the productive and educational projects that Fundacion Alpina has across the country. Read Annual Reports, Board of Directors letters, Sustainability Reports, National documents related with alimentary and nutritional security. 


Part B: This week, I began a process of evaluation of the projects that Fundación Alpina has. As explained before, F.A has two main types of projects to develop around Colombia. The first type, are considered “Productive Projects” and are projects that are specifically designed to improve productive practices for small lower income producers across the country. Fundación Alpina, also believes in the importance of providing Educational projects to create changes in the nutritional and alimentary practices of the communities in order to create changes that affect the entire community. As of 2011, the main projects that they have been working on since 2009 are:

Region/City	Name of the Project	Duration
Antioquia	Endorsing Social and Local Development in Entrerrios by Promoting a better use of Free time and strengthening the process of integration between Alpina and the Community	Aug 2010- Nov 2011
Antioquia	Promoting Alimentary, Nutritional and Educational Security	Dec 2010- Apr 2011
La Guajira	Cattle-Goat Herds in La Guajira, Implementing Good Practices of Rearing and Breeding	Oct 2009-Dec 2012
Cauca	Socio-Economic and Organizational Development of Small Milk Producers under an Inclusive Business Model	Oct 2009-Dec 2012
Cauca	Business and Social Development of Small Milk and Cheese Indigenous Tribes Producers	Sept 2009- Dec 2010
Cauca, Popayán	Pilot Project in the Popayán Plateau to evaluate the impact of the use of bio fertilizers in Small dairy farms	Apr 2010- Dec 2011
Sopó, Cundinamarca	Alimentary and Nutritional Security in Sopó	Feb 2010- Dec 2011
Bogotá D.C	Alternatives to Small Dairy Producers in Bogota	Aug 2009-Dec 2011
Bolivar	Reconstruction of El Salado. Agribusiness, health and Nutrition	Oct 2009- Dec2002

At the beginning of this week, I was assigned to read the reports from the Board of Directors, budget, performance reports, and project guidelines from 2009, 2010 and 2011 to see the evolution of the projects within the two phases of the project. This week I began working on the main project, which is to evaluate the performance of the project and evaluate how the productive projects could be incorporated in the educational projects, or if this is even possible and convenient. My final report will be viewed as an “analysis made by an  external consultant” in order to review in a comprehensive way the outcomes of the project. I believe that by the end of the week I will be done with the project since now I have access to all the information relevant to it. Later in the week, I will have the opportunity to go to Sopó, which has one of the most successful educational projects on alimentary and nutritional security, and talk to a couple people who have been involved in the project. I believe that their perspectives will be extremely important in order to have an unbiased perspective of the projects developed by Fundación Alpina.

 I believe that in the first two weeks I have learned to be more efficient with time management, to organize better the work load, by being able to summarize and take the main points of each research and put them together in the reports presented to my boss. Also, I have learned to analyze and contrast the different stages of a project in order to have a critical analysis of the reality of each.