A little about the Fundacion Paraguaya

So while living here in Asuncion, Paraguay I am working with the Fundacion Paraguaya which is a local non-profit that works on three main things: urban and rural micro-finance, a self-sustaining agricultural school and a junior achivement program. Overall this organization works to help people become entrepenuers in different phases of their lives. The organization does a lot of amazing things. It is a little different, more business like and capitalist, than the work I was expecting to do during this time of my life but overall it is great and I am going to learn a lot. I will explain a little bit about each of the different programs to give you a sense of what I am working on. Also their website is Fundacionparaguaya.org.py and you can get the information is english or spanish if you want more information.
First the AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL. This is a pretty amazing program. It is a full functioning boarding school about an hour outside of Asuncion but the really interesting part is that the students dont need to pay to attend but they sell the agriculture and other products they create at the school to fund it. It is a business as well as a school and the students play a key role. The school sells all different kinds of fruits and vegetables as well as grains, dairy products and meat. During their third year students have the opportunity to take on a leadership role and actually create a business plan to sell their corn or mandioca or cows. I really like this type of education because it is teaching them skills they wlll need and be able to use in their real life. There is a large percentage of Paraguayans working in agriculture so being able to teach them to do so in a profitable way is much more beneficial than making them memorize the Presidents of the US. The school is also certified by the country of Paraguay so they are receiving the same basic education as everyone else but also learning about agriculture and entrepeneurship. The Fundacion is really proud of this model and they are trying to share it with other organizations and countries throughout the world so if you or you know would be interested in this type of school you should let me know and I can get you in touch with the right people.

JUNIOR ACHIEVEMENT. I am not very familiar with this element of the organization. But it is a curriculum that is taught in schools throughout Asuncion that focuses on entrepeneurship and business skills.


Finally the largest program is MICRO-FINANCE and this is where I am working. They have 18 regional offices across the country and they give out tons of lones to all different types of business in urban and rural areas. One way to check out what they are doing is through another website called Kiva. They have a website of Kiva.org where you can actually give loans to micro-finance clients throughout the world. It is really cool and I think that everyone should check it out. You agree to a certain amount of money and you can choose the clients that you want to support. It is a great way to be involved with international development even if you cant leave the country. So yeah check out this website. Also a lot of the loans given out to Comites intsead of individuals. This increases their returns because if you are not able to pay your cuota you are letting a whole group of people down rather than just yourself. They have recently establish a program called Comites de Mujeres. This is when they bring a group of at 15 women together and give them a loan. It is a cool program becasue they have also used it to establish community and now they are creating musical groups and giving classes on health to the children of the women in these comites. I like that they are not simply giving out loans but they are trying to better the life of the people receiving loans through the establishment of social networks and teaching classes. Overall it is a really cool program and I am excited to keep learning more and more about it. So that is the basic explanation of the Fundacion. I really like and I have learned so much in the last couple of weeks and I know that I will just be learning more and more as time goes on.

Where I am headed

So I thought I would give you guys all a little bit of a visual as to where I am headed in the next couple of weeks. This is the region of Canindeyu and it is the Eastern part of Paraguay on the border with Brazil, see the bigger map of Paraguay. I am going to be living in the town of Ygatymi, which you can see on this map to the left. I really have no idea of what to expect from this experience other than the fact that most people dont speak english and most don't even speak Spanish. But everyone speaks Guarani a local indigenous language. The good news is that I have electricity and running water (I wasnt so sure about this) but very little internet contact or connections to the outside world. I am really excited about the work that I am going to be doing there, especially since now I have been working in an office from 830-5 and doing mostly data entry. I am learning some good things about financial reports and things like Cash Flow charts, but it will be good to get out. Once out there I am going to be working with the rural loan program which works directly with the Inter-American Development Bank. The Fundacion Paraguaya gives loans to comittees of farmers out there and I am going to be teaching them business and administrative skills. I have spent the last week working on the ciriculum and I am pretty excited about it. It is really basic but the idea of making a small difference is something that should be really good. It will be good for me to be out there in real Paraguay and struggle through living in a place where I dont speak the language and dont know anyone. It is something that I have never done before. Oh well that is really all from here. I hope that you enjoy this little preview as to what I think I will be doing and I look forward to updating you from out there and taking lots of pictures and the whole deal. Wish me luck....

Paraguay is a mystery

So I have been in Paraguay for almost three weeks now and havent writen anything but there is a lot to say so I am going to split it up by category. First I will try and describe this country a little bit. It is very different from the places that I have been thus far and I am learning a lot of new things. It is the second poorest country in South America (Bolivia is the first) but I live in suburbia with shopping mall and McDonalds that delivers (I have made a vow to never eat delivered McDonalds let alone in a third world country). The fact that I live in this neighborhood makes my life really easy. I dont feel unsafe and I have cable TV and the whole deal. But it is interesting because you will see mercedes driving down the street along side a horse drawn cart with a loud speaker trying to sell fruits. There is a huge income gap in Paraguay, you are either really rich and visit the beauty salon multiple times a week or you have close to nothing and have to buy a moto in order to run a mototaxi service or basically any other trade that will bring in a couple of bucks.
It is also interesting because as soon as you head out of the city things chance drastically. Last weekend a couple of friends and I went to visit a Ybycui National Park. On our way there we saw lots of farmers just sitting outside of the house drinking Terere (like mate but with cold water because it is so hot here). We also saw a cow being butchered and our cab (a pickup truck that we had to ride in the back of) was carrying a gun in his pants just in case. Overall anything outside of Asuncion is the Campo where there is very little technology or influence from the outside world. It is pretty interesting. Paraguay is different from all the other Latin American countries that I have been in and I look forward to be here for longer and experiencing more things.

Una Semana super bacan po!

After about six weeks of traveling it was amazing to return to a place that feels like home. I was in Valparaiso for about a week living with my old host family and just taking in as much of the city as I could. I knew that I loved it when I am studying there but this trip simply reaffirmed my love.
I spent a lot of time showing Maggie all the places that I loved through the cerros and streets of Valparaiso. This town is amazing and full of wondeful, creative and unique people. There is no need for a guide book, you can spend days just wandering around the city and each view is breathtaking. I also had number of marathon lunches were I discussed every element of life from my travels to legality of homosexual marriage with my familiy and their friends. It was amazing to be able to have deep conversations, because we had already had all of the shallow ones. We also took advantage of the night life and I ran into old friends and just had a wonderful time living the Chilean life again, even if it was for a short time.
Maggie and I also took a day trip to sand dunes right outside of Viña. This was a great day. I had never been to them before and it was a different world. You go from a pretty busy city full of buildings and dogs to what looks like the Sahara. We watched the sunset over the oceand it was simply amazing.
This week was a great way to end my traveling experience and start to get into the living in South America mentality. From Valparaiso I hopped a plane to Asuncion, Paraguay where I am going to be working for the next three months.

Heading down to Chile

Greetings from Valparaiso!!! So I have officially made it back to my old stomping grounds and it is wonderful. I have been here for a couple of days seeing old friends and favorite places. I forget how amazing this city really is. The trip here was by no means short or easy but it brought me to some wonderful places.
Before leaving La Paz I decided to ride a mountain bike down the the most dangerous road in the world. You take off from La Cumbre which rests at 4600 m up in the mountains ride all the way down to 1200m, that is a lot of meters in only about 4 and half hours. For those of you who know me well, you know that I dont mountain bike and I havent really riden a bike in years, so this was an experience. Like the rest of this trip, there has been a lot of personal growth. There were only four of us in the group and it was wonderful. We started on a concrete road and then got onto the actual death road which was just beautiful. There are no longer any that use the road, they opened a new and better one six months ago, but it was still scary. There were hair-pin turns with cliffs that were at least 500m high. We also stopped a number of times to see busses that had fallen off the side of the ride or memorials for bikers drivers. Overall it was a wonderful experience to push myself physicall and also to see the transition in landscape. We started up in the mountains and ended in the jungle, totally wild.
From La Paz I headed to Lake Titicaca for the third time. This time I visited the town of Puno which is on the Peruvian side. From there I went and saw the Floating Islands. They were very touristy but amazing. The indegenous people created these islands to try and maintain their culture and fight outside influence (kind of ironic that now it is a tourist trap in a lot of ways). There are full towns with supermarkets, public phones and schools floating on the lake and it is all made from natural materials. I am always amazed by the innovation that has been present throughout the years way before the introduction of modern technology. From Puno I headed to find Maggie and Brenda in Arequipa.
I was in Arequipa, Peru for almost a week but in the end did not see much of the city. We spent most of our time just hanging out around Brenda´s house with her wonderful family and friends. This was a good break because at this point I had been traveling for about six weeks and I was exhausted. It was really nice to be able to spend time with a family and friends, it was a lot more like real life.
From Arequipa Maggie and I took a side trip to the town of Chivay in beautiful Colca Canyon. On my trip I have seen a lot of amazing things but this may have been the most beautiful place that I visited. We stayed in a hostal owned by one of Brenda´s family friends and had a great time relaxing there and playing with their two children. The first night we were there we soaked in the towns hot springs under the full moon. It was amazing because we showed up as all the tourists were leaving and had the whole place to ourselves. The next morning we woke up at 4 in the morning to go and see condors. We had to ride 2 hours standing on a really full bus with blasting music but once we finally got there it was amazing. We were there before all the tourists and it was so tranquil. After about an hour we saw some birds deep down in the canyon and we got all excited that we saw the Andean Condor because a lot of people travel to this site and dont even see one bird. But then about an hour later the real show began. The birds that were down in the canyon came up and put on an amazing arial show. They would fly back and forth about 20m above our head. The condor is a sacred bird in the Inca culture and in the wolrd of Andrew Merrell which I did not really understand until this morning and now I am totally in love. They are huge but graceful and beautiful animals. While in the canyon we also did a day tour of the region with Miguel, the owner of the hostal, and saw a bunch of amazing things. It is wonderful to know someone where you are traveling and you can just chat with them about the culture, history and people of a region rather than having to pay a lot of money to go on a tacky tour. From Colca we went back and had a crazy last night in Arequipa and then started to head south.
To get from Arequipa to Valparaiso it is about 35 hours on a bus so we broke it up a little bit but overall we were on a bus for a long time. Although this may seem horrible we had a good time, met some cool people and watched a lot of bad dubbed movies. But it was all worth it because I as back home in the city of cerros and bad spanish.