Children's Nutrition

Here's Peter to tell you about our Chilren's Nutrition Program. And there are pictures!

Cueridos Amigos!  You got Pete this week writing about Childrens' Nutrtion class.  After a few meetings with the school director and some of the teachers, Manna’s Childrens' Nutrition class was incepted as part of the Natural Sciences curriculum at Chaupitena. We have three classes of seventh graders every Wednesday with about thirty or more students in each class.  The students and staff have been very warm and welcoming to Polly, Jenni and myself.

One of our goals this semester with the classes is to create an interactive curriculum that would enhance comprehension and be simultaneously fun.  With only three classes under our belt we have covered two food groups, grains and vegetables/fruit, and discussed the importance of healthy eating habits and what is a healthy overall diet. Every class begins with a brief review and quiz on last week's material then our charla or health topic of discussion with a relevant activities throughout.  The most challenging aspect so far has been keeping such a large class interested and focused on the material.  However, with three of us we do an excellent job of monitoring all the chatter, poking and prodding that comes with being eleven years old.

We all love to cook, and of course eat healthy, so incorporating some food preparation activities is on our plate this semester.  We all agree that this would be one of the most effective ways to get young persons interested and thus aware about healthy eating habits.  We are not sure yet if putting knives in their hands is the best idea, so we will start with forks.

We look forward to continuing our relationship working with one of the local schools in our community and getting to know a wider range of its members.  What it all boils down to is that it is fun for the students and that they are digesting the material. Speaking for the entire group this is definitely one of the most enjoyable and rewarding programs we are fortunate to be a part of...
As Polly says we “have never been so popular at recess!”

Polly, Jenni and the gang.

Sebastian taking meticulous notes.

Small Business Development Program

Sorry for the lack of posts last week. I wanted to post about our new and improved Small Business Development program but was waiting around for some pictures that never came. So here's a nice boring looking post about a very interesting new look at an old program. I'll let Sarah do the talking:

Hey everyone! Here in Ecuador we've been spending the last couple months turning our Small Business Development program from a consulting service for individual business owners into a full-fledge microfinance program. The road has been both rocky and exciting and we've been learning a lot. Our aim from the start was to run a first loan cycle as a test of our model and see how successful we could be at providing this service to the community (are we giving the loans to people who truly want to invest in their businesses? are they able to pay us back within the set timeframe? is this access to affordable capital actually making a difference to the revenue they make in their businesses and thus improving their standard of living?). We spent our first couple weeks meeting with community members who could guide us in the process, making visits to the director of a small savings and loans cooperative, to the manager of the local government offices of the Patronato for Social Progress, to the credit officer at a microfinance NGO - and luckily they were all eager to give us a hand and help us navigate the new world of microfinance (new to us, at least).  

As of now, our first microcredit project looks like this: Working with the Patronato, we are first providing a four-week course in agro-business planning and management to eight farming women from the semi-rural community of Jatumpungo. At the end of this course, the women interested in receiving a loan will submit a business plan and we will select a group of 4 women to give a loan to. They will be given a maximum of $400 per person, to be paid back over 4 months (corresponding with the growth cycles of their greenhouse crops) at an annual interest rate of 9% (which adds up to a total of $12). Our hope is that they will invest these loans in new and simple technologies for their greenhouses (irrigation, fertilizer, better tarps, etc) so that they can produce and sell more and start earning a significant income from their land. If this first loan cycle goes well, we will be seeking to reinvest in a new cycle, and hopefully our experience gained from this one will help us scale the project to reach more beneficiaries. 

That's all from Small Business for now. We are presenting our project to the president of the Patronato tomorrow morning - wish us luck!

Side note: We presented to the president and she loved the idea so we're moving forward with our plans .

Later this week - Children's Nutrition by Peter Wagner

Best,

Jefferson 

Children's Art

Here is the second program post on our Children's Art program by Joey Teevens:

            Ahoy there readers!  I hope you all find yourselves well.  Polly and I are posting here to update you on our first children’s art class, which took place this past Friday afternoon.  The children’s art program takes place once a week throughout our semester and consists of a general theme designed to allow the kids to learn more about different countries and cultures, as well as to explore their own creative abilities.  Our theme for this semester, appropriately enough, is South America.  Every week we will be introducing our students to a different South American country by making a presentation about its people and culture, culminating with a review of a specific art form or craft that we will attempt to replicate in the classroom. 

            Polly and I chose to begin the semester with Brazil.  We found a cool little Brazilian maraca craft for kids online and moved forward with the energy and rhythm worthy of a professional samba instructor.  We complemented our supplies of paint, popsicle sticks, glue, strings, and beads by purchasing paper plates, lentils, and kernels of corn.  Having thus acquired such an astonishing artistic arsenal, we commenced a creative carnaval with our children who were craving colorful creations.  With Brazilian music setting the mood in the background, the kids eagerly started to paint their paper plates.  Utilizing some construction paper, Polly had also managed to make small Brazilian flags and soccer balls (I did my best to make little pink and orange construction paper carnaval masks) and the kids glued them on to their plates once they were done painting.  To finish off the maracas, we gave each kid a handful of kernels and lentils to place between their paper plates, glued everything together, added strings (with beads on the ends of course), and voila!  Brazilian maracas!  I hope you enjoy these pictures of our little Picassos as much as we enjoyed getting in touch with our own inner-artists with them!  Until next time, cuídense and remember, a little bit of dried glue and paint never hurt anyone!

Small Business' New Microfinance Program

The Small Business Development Program is launching an ambitious small loans initiative beginning in October. In just under two months, we have revamped SBD from a small financial consulting program into a micro loan program. Teaming up with the local Patranato, or the local government social service, we have found a number of potential clients involved in agribusiness. Along with the Patranato and a local financial cooperative as our partner, we will be giving business classes throughout the month of October. At the end of the month, the clients will submit business plans laying out how they would utilize and then repay their loan. From this group, we will select the four most promising candidates to give loans of $400. Through this initiative, we are able to offer interest rates that are significantly lower than national banks and local financial cooperatives. Our program has already raised $1000 through a generous donation to get our initiative off the ground. We have set a goal of matching that through public fundraising so please click the link below to learn more about the program and to donate.

 http://www.razoo.com/story/Mpi-Ecuador-S-New-Microfinance-Program

Best,
Jefferson

New Program Description Series

With the start of our English, nutrition, cooking, and computer classes, our schedules have finally been finalized and we have finally gotten into the swing of things. All our workloads just got heavier and our time more constricted, but everyone is thriving so far. Since we've finally started all our programs, it's a great time to begin a weekly blog write up describing each of our programs written by the director of that program. The series will include a description of the program, what is currently happening within the it, and what the director envisions for the it over their next year of shaping the program.  I'll be starting the series describing our Teen Center, which is run by Peter, Jenny, and myself. 

The Teen Center is a separate part from our library that only children 12 years old and above are able use. This provides their own unique, mature space that they can hang out in when they want to escape the potentially wild atmosphere that is the library. The space has a crafts, board games, a ping pong table, and the biggest draw, the video game corner. While it doesn't seem like much, it means so much for the kids that can enter, and even more to the kids that can't. I witnessed for my first time yesterday the pure elation that a kid gets when he can finally enter. Bryan had turned 12 the day before yesterday and couldn't wait to get in. I think I played ping pong with him for a solid two hours before he got tired of it, and God was he awful. We also hold events specifically for the teens. This mostly comes in the form of a movie night every month where we bring our projector and create a mini theater for the kids on a Friday night. Our first one is September 21st and the kids are already excited. While movie nights are great, we are going to expand upon the idea of a monthly event this year. 
For October, we are planning on a hosting a salsa class for the kids, free of charge, led by our friend Danny who happens to be a member for the Ecuadorian Salsa team that competes globally. Yeah, we know. However, what we are most excited for is that our Thanksgiving volunteer group from UGA has chosen the Teen Center as it's focus project. We've decided to wait till then to do a huge remodeling of the space. We are planning on painting the area, building new furniture, tearing down useless parts, and generally doing a massive sprucing up of the space. Besides more events and a remodeling, my fellow directors and I have set the goal of turning the Teen Center into a more educational area. This will include setting up small library specifically for the teens, which will hopefully include subscriptions to a few magazines to keep the area updated and interesting. The big task will be getting the kids away from the video games. While extremely helpful in drawing them in, we also want them to take advantage of the space we provide and get something out of it besides how to beat Super Mario in an hour.

View of the Teen Center 

Jenny Prepping for the Kids

MPI

The Game Corner

If you would like to contribute to the Teen Center to help us achieve these goals, you can make a donation on the right side of the blog and simply specify the Teen Center. If you would like to contribute in a more direct way, you can send us anything in the list on the right side to our office in Nashville where it will find a way to us and be less of a dent in your pocket. Thank you for your continued interest and support.


Next week: Children's Art by Polly Colgan