Sunday Summary Week 2

Part A: Worked on an analysis and evaluation of the educative and productive projects that Alpina has across the country. I visited one of the main educative projects in Sopo and interviewed people from the community.

Part B: This week, I started to work in the main project that I will turn in at the end of the internship. I began to write an evaluation and a proposal on how the educative project in Sopó could be strengthened by adding productive components. My proposal is based on giving a better use to family orchards so they can work in association and initially supply fruits and vegetables to the Sopó municipality and then work with Fundación Alpina to find commercialization channels. I analyzed previous reports, annual reports and visited Sopó in order to get a better idea of how the community perceives the project.

This was also an extremely successful week as my supervisor told me that she was very pleased with my work. She told me that it was very important for them to have an external analysis of the project and to have me as I can provide an unbiased and honest opinion of what I think for the project. She also told me that although she gave me suggestions and corrections for the first draft of the final project, she says that I am in the right track and that some of my suggestions will be implemented as part of their future plans with educative projects in Sopó, and if they can in the rest of the educative projects in the country. Thanks to the visit in Sopó, I have strengthened my career thoughts towards Economic Development. It was great to see how a project that is just educational has such an important impact in lower income communities. While visiting, I met “Vera”; she is a community leader and a key player in the project. I was very inspired to see that leaders like her are interested in improving the conditions for her family and her surroundings. I believe that I can make an impact in the world by starting to work in these types of communities and developing projects where people can have access to the tools for improving their live conditions.

I also had the opportunity to meet Eduardo Diaz, the director of Fundación Alpina. It was very interesting to meet him since he told me that he was disappointed with the current emphasis that universities give to economists. He graduated as an economist as well, and we found a lot in common, we discuss how economic theories could be applied better and are more useful if people saw the impact that they could have if it was applied in development issues. He told me that the doors would be open for me if I wanted to go back to work for Fundación Alpina and that he was anxious to see the presentation that I would give to the people at Loras. He also gave me copies of different books, a necklace and other souvenirs from the projects that F.A has worked on. I really enjoyed the conversation with him, and I realized that I would love to have a possibility to have a job like that, where I can direct economic and social development programs in a national level.