Back to study!

In two days "school" will start again for me! I was selected by the Alianza Social Uniandina to participate in a 17 session program on "Institutional Strengthening" (hope the translation makes sense!). They funded this year in total 8 students like me to get trainning on how to make organizations, specially those in the social sector, stronger through consulting. After the program ends, we shall still provide consultancy to some organizations they will assigned to us on a volunteer basis.

Looking forward!

Graduation

Me (hope you can find me!!) and my 5th grade students of the local school of Bogota Eduardo Carrenza, in the graduation after the almost 2 month volunteering cycle teaching entrepreneurship.

Atlas Corps Summer in Bogota

Some time ago I introduced ATLAS CORPS

After some months of incredibly fast development in Colombia as in India and the US, they have some cool activities that they would need enthusiastic people to help with! By the way, they have now a site in spanish! If interested in some volunteering to do this summer, read below:

1. 5 Americans on their way ... Doing our part to promote Colombia tourism!

Well more than just tourism, these five Americans are coming to help grow Atlas Corps and promote international cooperation. They can use your help while they are here. In particular, I am looking for leads with the following items: - Any families willing to rent a room for the summer to a volunteer?- Any leads on cheap places to buy / rent bikes so they can participate in ciclovia?- Anyone willing to invite them out to dinner or out dancing?- Any leads on either cheap office space / extra work area that we may able to use?- Any leads of used office furniture, desk, filing cabinent, files, old phones, etc?Most of the volunteers come in early June, but one, Mary Jo, has already arrived. We appreciate your help welcoming our American volunteers!

2. Help us Prepare for our Summer Party!

Let Alejandra know if you would like to join the party planning committee by emailing her at alejandra@atlascorps.org. We need people who can help with locations, the media, fundraising, invitations, etc. The event will be in late June or July and will be the official launch of Atlas Corps in Colombia.

Last class ... assembling pens!

Some of my students "assembling" pens

As told before, I am volunteering as an entrepreneurship teacher here in Colombia each tuesday, teaching 5 grade kids. Today I had one of the coolest classes since I started and it was about the different production types a company can have. So basically what we did is that we started to assemble pens, simulating that the whole class was a pen manufacturing company.

We simulated the three main types of production methods a company can have: unitary production (each pen or group of pens had to be completed by students individually and non stop), mass production (each stage was done by each student who passed the finished part to the next one) and production by batches (pens were donde by parts, but the next group of students could not start assembling until the previous batch was not fully done). It was fun, we measured time and productivity in each method and based on that, we defined pros and cons of each method. Ah! we also had quality controllers, students that at the end of each production tested if all pens looked fine and worked properly.



They look so disciplined right? well, they are not! don't believe all what you see in the pictures, pictures do not capture motion! and those kids particularly for this activity were so hyperactive that ate some moments I wanted to run out of the class-room! More news on my teaching adventures soon ...

JCI and 90 minutes of entrepreneurial reflexion

Some days ago I was invited by a friend to give a trainning on entrepreneurship (how complicated is that, ah?) to a local chapter of JCI (Junio Chamber International) here in Bogota.

I called the thing "90 minutos de reflexion emprendedora", which means 90 minutes of entrepreneurial reflexion - and I put this name, since I am not a guru [yet :-) hehehe] on entrepreneurship, so I rather managed the thing as a reflexion and a workshop for all the people, where I certainly brought up some concepts about entrepreneurship, but also invited people to make up their own opinion about the issue. Accordng to the feedback it was fun and interesting for them, I used videos, songs and of course shared some alternatives on how on a personal level you get through very simple activities and attitudes into the entrepreneurial mood. I must really say that thanks to my life experiences with Endeavor, AIESEC, Ashoka and Colombia Emprendedora, to motivate others about entrepreneurship is something really enjoyable.

By the way this is a picture on how the JCI assembly looked like!



After AIESEC, it was interesting to be back into such an intimate space of an association, where people are and behave as friends ... having a particular culture, a particular language, particular behaviour, particular internal jokes ... The JCI environment was certainly very formal and process-oriented in my opinion and also I had the perception many things that these guys do are also done in AIESEC, specially in your first years ... but I guess , things are not always how they look like (specially when you are an external!) and let's see if there is a wayfor this passionate AIESEC Alumni and Entrepreneurship Freak to work together with them!

Meanhwile, all the best to all JCI guys!

My first teachers' day!

"Thanks to your job as a volunteer we are transforming teh future of the childhood and youth of Colombia"

Since almost 3 weeks I started volunteering as a teacher on entrepreneurship with a foundation called COLOMBIA EMPRENDEDORA (they are the colombian chapter or Junior Achievement International). Junior Achievement uses hands-on experiences to help young people understand the economics of life. In partnership with business and educators, Junior Achievement brings the real world to students, opening their minds to their potential.

It's been a very special experience, I give classes to 10 - 11 year old children (5th grade) on entrepreneurship related topics. The foundation has a very well developed curriculum that is given to all volunteers (a funky bag with workbooks for each student, name tags, pens, and all kind of didactic materials to play games and simulations) and the only thing we need to do is to put our personality into action and run the 1 hour class.

Each module takes aprox. 5 classes and you pick one day a week to go to the school (for 5 weeks.) You can run modules all year long if you want, yo can switch grades and schools. The not that easy part is to wake up early! Yes, since we volunteers normally start working at our offices max. at 9.00 a.m., our classes take place from 6.45 to 7.45/8.00 a.m. , so that we can make it on time to our offices.

Coming back to the title of this post, well ... today is teachers' day in Colombia. At this day normally kids (I also did when I was at school) bring gifts and congratulate our teachers for the amazing profession they picked and the great support they offer to us. While being at the last years of school and the first years of university I used to give also private classes of german, english and in some cases, even general "homework making" support to kids - so I can't deny that being a teacher and a mentor has been sin always enjoyable (and profitable!), no doubt. But today, was the first time that I was in front of a class and kids came to me and hugged me, and kissed me and some of them gave me some candies as a gift. Extremely sweet. It was also complemented by the e-card you can see above I got from Colombia Emprendedora.

I thought for myself at the end of the class - it's wonderful to be a "PROFE" (the word "profe" is the short/kids used version ofthe word "profesora" which means teacher in spanish"), you are not just putting your skills into action, but contributing to an aspect of education that seemed to be completely ignored: entrepreneurship.

I hope to post at some point again more about my volunteer teacher experiences and some fotos of my class.