Sunday, November 22, 2009

Winding Down

As the days wind by, and it is getting closer and closer to when I am coming home for Christmas, I have been trying to wind down my current projects, to start fresh in the new year.

I just taught my last class of ESCOJO MI VIDA (Choose my Life), which is class for youth teaching them about making healthy decisions about sex, alcohol, drugs, discrimination etc. I am giving them an exam on Tuesday, which many have told me they will score a 100%, I hope so! I will probably have a Christmas themed graduation, because I love celebrating Christmas as everyone knows, and since 99.9% of people are some form of Christian, I figure this will be fine.

We just received some more grant money for the library, so this morning we are working on doing some more construction on the outside wall, and we just bought some new books and finally book stands (we had been using rocks). Anyways, I think we will be able to finish with spending the money before I leave.

With my artisans, I have been visiting all the different workshops and conducting evaluations with them of how the year has went and what projects they would like to accomplish in my last year with them. I am planning a afternoon event, where we will do team building activities, and talk about the results of the evaluations. Then we will create a plan of action for the coming year.

Right now we are gearing up for a few artisan fairs. We are participating in a fair at the US Embassy and a 5 day Christmas Fair in the beginning of December. I have been doing sales trainings for my artisans who will be selling at the fairs and making very basic promotional brochures in English and Spanish to educate customers about our products. I planned my flight to work out so I would be leaving from the capital the day after the Christmas fair (where I will also do much of my gift shopping). Let me know if there is anything anyone wants before I come home! Again the website to our merchandise is http://picasaweb.google.com/kconnorsdrv.

In December we should know if we are accepted for an international folk art festival in Santa Fe New Mexico. If so this will be a big break for the artisan association and a great chance to make networking contacts for exporting.

I am also now preparing for our 1 year in Service Peace Corps Conference where I will be presenting my work in the last year along with challenges and successes. We will also be preparing a certain tool for the group that everyone can use in their service. I will be creating a sales training class, so if anyone has any good research on sales technique email them my way! We will also be problem solving about a challenge, and I think I will be presenting a case study to better organize meetings or to create a better system of organization of the association. Also, if anyone has material on management techniques for meetings or for small businesses, let me know!

I am getting so excited about coming home and I can’t wait to see everyone! But right now I am just focusing to tie up all projects so I can really relax during vacation!

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