Jumping In

Can you find the iguana?

Those of you who know me well know that I have a chronic addiction (besides chocolate milk); I am addicted to being busy. Few things grate on my nerves more than having nothing to do, and I can usually create far too many things to fill in extra time on those rare occasions that I have any. Well, I’m glad to say that my experience here in Belize has been a fantastic supplier to feed my addiction: my day was filled with delicious productivity that I’m just dying to tell you all about.

In case you missed it, I already posted a short entry here on this blog this morning detailing my morning. Things just got even better from there. This is truly an amazing team of young adults with well over 30 projects currently going on to help decrease poverty and battle its effects here in Belize. All of the projects are come up with by the team members themselves and we all help with lots of the different projects the other team members are heading up. At any given moment there are 3-6 projects going on somewhere nearby that we can be helping with when we aren’t doing research to aid in starting our own projects. 

The first several hours of my day I was helping with the Chicken Coop project. We are building chicken coops at a school for orphaned boys so that they can learn how to raise the chickens as a trade. Several of the boys came to help us build the coop and we taught them how to use the power tools. The plan is later to make an even bigger coop that will house 3 species simultaneously that reinforce each other. This larger coop will have rabbits, chickens, and worms. The rabbits can survive on a very basic diet of plants that, when digested, becomes food for the worms, who multiply and become food for the chickens. Excess worms can be sold for bait and the chickens and rabbits can both be sold for food. This is a very valuable self-sustaining system that these boys will learn how to take care of so they can use it to provide if needs be in their future. 

Kyle teaches Edward how to use the drill.

More chicken coop work with the boys.

We teach true principles... and they build chicken coops themselves! 

(Favorite picture of the day)

Following a lunch of delicious local fried rice, all of the new team members had a training meeting for several hours where we talked about the projects going on, the basic program rules, safety guidelines, etc. 

Next is the most exciting part! Building chicken coops is very cool and exciting, and I’m glad to be a part of some of these other labor-centric projects. However, the kinds of projects I’ll probably be leading will be business-centric and I got to have my first taste of putting that skill set to work this evening. After the training I teamed up on a mini-project with Lindsey, one of our team members and also the wife of the program director for Belize. She and Kyle had recently been talking with the landlords of the building we stay in, a wonderful Belizean couple named Jorge and Shamira, about a resort they recently purchased that is a slight fixer-upper but which they don’t have the money to make major renovations at right now. They wanted advice in marketing it and adjusting their business plan and Kyle has been eager to help them since they’ve been so good to the team here and as they could really benefit from the business counseling and in return have shown themselves to be great pillars in the community who are highly interested in helping to fight poverty. So, at 3:30 I was asked if I’d like to help Lindsey come up with a marketing and business plan to present to them at 6:30 that evening! I quickly read about the resort they’d purchased, saw pictures, and began formulating ideas to help them revise their plan and market to the right sub-groups of the American tourist set. We had an incredible brainstorming session and made a PowerPoint presentation detailing our marketing plan, including our suggestion to rename the resort “Rainforest Haven” as well as other adjustments to their plan and minor, affordable renovations to the resort. 

Then, at 6:30, Kyle, Lindsey, and I met up with Jorge and Shamira and I gave the pitch to them. They LOVED it! They were overjoyed and excited and began to see their purchase of the resort, which was a major risk they had begun to worry about, as a very positive opportunity to improve their financial situation (not to mention that of others that they’ll employ and stimulate other businesses in the area of the resort). We’re going to meet with them again soon to work out more details and I’m going to help them create a website for their resort and teach them how to use PayPal to process online reservations. I was on cloud 9. My first full day in Belize and I’ve already helped counsel a business after hearing about it with 3 hours’ notice and having to develop a full marketing strategy and accompanying PowerPoint. That’s the crazy kind of thing you do in classes in the business school, but I never expected to put it into effect so quickly and drastically in the real world, and especially for it to be such a success! This is a very small mini-project and not quite the same as most business-related projects, but it was a fantastic experience nonetheless and I’m hungry for more! 

Dinner tonight was FANTASTIC! Our cook, “Mama Kay,” made mashed potatoes, chopped tomatoes with corn, Belizean meatloaf, and FANTASTIC homemade tortillas. Later, at the end of the day, the team had a meeting to coordinate the next few days of projects and we celebrated the success of the second wave (the last six weeks of projects) with fantastic Belizean ice cream which, you would never guess this from tasting it, is made with their own soy milk. Anyway, that’s the Cliff’s notes version of my amazing day. I love you all, and I love Belize.