Summer Work

My next project was going to be teaching individual families about household budgets and wise spending and saving habits. My big idea was to set up a calendar and talk to interested families one-on-one because it is hard to implement any major change in these types of decisions if you just receive a two hour lecture on how to do it. You need to sit down with someone with your real numbers and make a plan, written down, in order to actually make some sort of change. However no one really understood that concept and only a few families signed up for the consultations. So, we are doing a few lectures that will really amount to work for me but no actual results. Hopefully, though, those lectures will get some more families interested in an individual plan and even more hopefully these plans will actually make some positive permanent change in the family’s economic status.
The other project may or may not ever happen. The German volunteer in my site’s parents decided they wanted to fund some sort of project in my site but didn’t know what so she and I approached the coffee association with some ideas. We decided on a sort of sustainable agriculture project that targets the poorest families that have fallow lands and provides them with oregano plants (which are short cycle for immediate income) and citrus tree saplings (which mature in 5 years for long-term growth) and the technical assistance to get things up and going. It’s a great project and actually pretty cheap to help quite a few families but I’m not sure how serious her parents were or if they will get anything up and going before she leaves (which is the end of August).
The biggest problem we are having is that the coffee association and its umbrella organization have put their organic certification in jeopardy by not turning in some essential compliance forms. Because of this all marketing projects (which I’ve been spearheading) have been put on hold and their entire operation could take a major step backward. I attribute this problem entirely to politics. First, this election year the umbrella organization and many of the organizations that make it up (such as my coffee association) were involved in political campaigns, taking their time away from their work. Second, last year there was a change in the administration of the umbrella organization which was cause solely because of a political power struggle (the organization is very well recognized and a successful running of it can help political ambitions) and the new administration is clearly failing. While it’s sad to see such a successful undertaking falling down for something so stupid, it happens a lot in this world and I don’t feel sorry for them in the least. I do feel sorry for the farmers who are complying with the regulations who will not earn the higher prices because the people they entrusted to do the paper-work couldn’t get that done. As always, the person who really suffers is the lowest person the ladder, the one who did nothing wrong and is holding up his part of the deal.