Journal Entries Week 1: #3

Part A: Finalize report and analysis of developing the Nutritional and Alimentary project in other regions

Part B: I turned in my first project a little bit nervous about the feedback that I would get. As I expected, there were a few things in my report that were not completely accurate since I did not have enough information about the project. My boss recognized that the mistakes made in the report were due to lack of information. Besides that she was very pleased with the results of my first results. I found funny that she told me that a couple of things seemed to be translated from English to Spanish (considering that my native language is Spanish).

The first success of my experience was turning in my first document. I was not expecting

to turn in projects so early in the process, and I enjoyed having to turn in something early in the internship. I believe having early feedback will help me to improve my future documents and have a greater process of improvement in my performance.

After a successful week of work, and becoming familiar with the project that Fundación Alpina is developing in Sopó, I am excited for a new coming week. I find amazing that a company with such an important presence in Colombia and that has been growing exponentially in the past couple years, has not lost its social responsibility aspect but instead has worked towards making it stronger through the creation of Fundación Alpina. It is also exciting to see that more companies now a days are engaging in socially responsible type of businesses and that acknowledge the importance of working not only towards increasing their profit, but also to improve their surroundings, create better communities, and find ways to give back to their they have established their companies.  

Journal Entries Week 1: #2

 Part A: Read project monthly reports, work on report (implementation of the project in other regions)

Part B: I had the week to work on how implement the project in a different region. While working on the project during the week, I realized that although I was given reports that described some results and commented on some of the monthly events, I did not have a good scope of the project. I believe the reason was that my supervisor did not send me the entire original project so I based a couple of my responses based solely on the information that I had. It was harder than what I thought to provide solutions and alternative projects to implement in other communities if I did not completely understand the purpose and the impacts without having a solid base that described the program.

This showed me that although my project success could be supported by the responsibilities and trust that they were giving me to help them find solutions for the program, at the same time it could be hindered if there was not an effective communication, especially since a large portion of my project was based on analysis of information that I have to get from them.

Journal Entries Week 1: #1

Part A: Reading institution's annual reports, getting familiar with objectives, long term goals and the role of Fundacion Alpina in the company. 

Part B: The first day of work was unusual. I was highly disappointed when I found out that my supervisor was out of the country and that I did not have to go to the company during that week. However, her absence was not an obstacle for me to begin my job. She constantly communicated with me via email and through phone calls from her secretary. From the first day, I realized that the amount of work that I was going to handle was going to be intense. Here is where my assumptions began.

I realized that I could not start analyzing a project that I barely knew about and that I had compare to other projects that I did not exactly knew how they worked. So my first assumption was that I was going to be doing large amounts of reading and spending a lot of time investigating the roots, the process and the results of the project (to the moment) before I could move any further. The second assumption is that I would have to work mostly by myself and not as a team while I read and fully understood the concept of the project. I finally assumed that I would be granted access to contact information from people in the Sopó community that I could interview and find a humane voice behind the statistical information to see what the community thinks about the project.

By the end of the first day, I already had a large amount of reading to become familiar with Fundación Alpina, its role in the community and a couple of highlights of the project. This first day I was assigned my first task which consisted on analyzing a couple of reports from the institution and with that information, create a report (due Friday, December 24, 2011) on how the Nutritional and Alimentary Security project could be replicated in other communities in Colombia. I was excited, and felt that this responsibility will contribute to the success of my project because big tasks were assigned to me since the beginning of the project.

Organization, Project, and Connection

The project consists in a quantitative and qualitative analysis of a project that Fundación Alpina has in the community where the main offices are located in Sopó, Colombia. The name of the project is "Sopó, Territorio de Seguridad Alimentaria y Nutricional" (Sopó, Territory of Nutritional and Alimentary Security) and is being developed in conjunction of the City Hall of Sopó.

Alpina Productos Alimenticios is a large multinational which has as a core principle social responsibility and sustainability. For this reason, Fundación Alpina has a project with the municipality, where they provide nutritional and informational programs about the importance of hygiene in cooking procedures, of having a balanced nutrition, teach the people how to create their own orchards and gardens, and strategies to improve the overall household conditions. This program is designed for community centers, childcare centers, and educational institutions that attend children from very low income households.

At the end of the second year of this project, Fundacion Alpina needs an evaluation of the success or failure of the strategies used to develop the project this year. This needs to be done in terms of budget, practices, and analysis of results of the response from the community. In this way, my personal commitment and connection with the team, is to evaluate and analyze the data and the results obtained from the second phase of the project (the first one was from 2009 to 2010, the second phase from 2010-2011). Furthermore, I was assigned to act as an external consultant in order to provide suggestions and recommendations that could be implemented as part of the project. Also, I am in charge of analyzing how this project could be implemented in other regions taking into account variables, possibilities and difficulties that this might bring. Finally, after analyzing the project in Sopó I will compare this project (which is mainly educational) to others across the country which are mainly productive projects (I will add more information about this once it becomes available to me) to determine if there could be a joint educative and productive project, or if it would be better to leave these projects separate.  

Project Design: Fundacion Alpina

Organization: Fundación Alpina

 

Description

Fundación Alpina is an entity created by the Multinational Company Alpina Productos Alimenticios, one of the biggest dairy producer in South America. Alpina S.A started in 1945 in a small town outside of Bogotá named Sopó, and is currently expanding to countries like Ecuador, Venezuela and most recently in the United States. 

Fundación Alpina was created in May 2008, with the main objective of guaranteeing, promoting, and follow closely, Alpina's motto of “Alimentary Security” as well as to promote sustainable ways to solve problems in society. Within just two years of its creation, Fundación Alpina has become an important player in a national level in the Nutritional and Alimentary Security efforts (a national initiative that intends to guarantee nutrition and proper alimentation for every citizen). This institution, also intends to create collective prosperity in all aspects, from food security, to social and economic development. Fundación Alpina also works as a vehicle for communities in a way that it transfers knowledge from Alpina to the communities, who use this knowledge in order to improve their life quality. The institution intends to create cooperative work with lower income communities in order to develop as a team a sustainable development.