So much has happened and I have shared so little. I am sorry. It’s about time for an update here! My time here is amazing and now I’ve become very busy. Yo tengo muchos metas (I have many goals here). First of all, el proyectos. The planning is getting really exciting. The team and I have come up with a document that describes our project, but it’s not final. We have an ambitious idea to contribute to the sustainable development of Arequipa and invest in youth, but we have needed more direction. After assessing our strengths and weaknesses and coming up with an initial networking strategy to explore opportunities for ourselves, we are flying forward. We’re playing tag with CEDER still, but we’ve met with CICA (a department in la Universidad Catolica that formulates and runs social projects). They told us we need to be more concrete with our plan in terms of a time line and a budget. For our sake, we know this is necessary but we have special challenges in doing this. Unique to our organization, is the dependence on the external environment for our project (for example trainees being willing to come to Arequipa, and the companies and NGOs we seek partners with). However, the incredible news—well the first piece of incredible news—is that we have a superstar mentor, Percy Rodrigues. He has been the general manager for many companies in Arequipa and now he teaches at the university. He’s got a lot of experience and has agreed to be our mentor!!

This is a BIG deal—to have a mentor of such accomplishment, so now I have butterflies of excitement!! To put the icing on the cake, he’s going to give us a copy of his to-be published book on strategic management before it goes to the printers! It’s an incredible honor, and now I have a vast translating challenge ahead. I’m getting ready by translating newspaper articles. I can definitely say that reading Spanish is much easier than the listening, or speaking aspect. Already Percy has given us the contacts for two people who work with social projects that involve youth! We have muchos meetings on the way.

Okay, now here’s something else incredibly fantastic. Betoalonso (the Member Committee President for Peru in 2003-2004), and AIESECer that knows pretty much 1/3 of our network of 20 000 students and what seems like every fifth person on the streets of Arequipa has spoken with Arequipa’s Chamber of Commerce for us. The Chamber of Commerce was very interested in our ideas, and has suggested that we organize a conference in tandem with one planned for Peruvian artisans. This conference will be a gathering of NGOs and the artisans. There are no details at this point other than the basic idea that it would serve to unite various actors in the social sector, and serve as a place to introduce AIESEC. Truly, this is another great honour, to be invited to arrange a conference for NGOs. I can’t wait to have more detail. The chamber of commerce says we can have a meeting whenever we want to talk about this further. We will be approaching them after a few more meetings with Percy and the contacts he leads us to.

As a team our dynamics are improving. The commitment is increasing as the last two meetings were around 3 hours long and really late at night, but they were great! We have talked about the strengths and weaknesses of our team and project and came up with strategies for enhancing the strengths and minimizing the weaknesses. For example, we need more human resources, so we will make a presentation to new members at a conference for them this Sunday and then initiate an interview process. We also identified the threats and opportunities, but we need more strategic planning to develop a longer term strategy for these areas. We’re well on our way though. Motivation is key, and the progress of the project has increased the team motivation I sense. What also helps is if all the members of the team know each others goals and how they relate to the project. We’re all now more sensitive to each other. It is a great exercise.