Progress. & Yucca bread

Today was the most exciting day yet of my time here with CAC working on A Ganar. Yesterday we went through all of the youth that we had so far interviewed and eliminated those that could not enter the program, due to lack of motivation or age or whatever other reason that agreed with our criteria. The meeting was my idea, and it proved to be pivotal. After eliminating the ineligible, we proceeded to decide on an action plan for those remaining. Today we went to the orphanage and spoke with the psychologist there to be sure that the youth from the Albergue that we had selected to enter the program were viable candidates. Happily, we had sensed the issues in those that she commented on, and we had sensed the potential of those that she mentioned would be ideal candidates. So, it looks like we have our first 9 participants selected!!

The rest of the youth that have already been interviewed and passed into "round 2" of our selection process will receive house visits by our two psychologists, to ensure the family is supportive of their participation and reconfirm their commitment. For those youth that never signed up for interviews, we decided to call them once more, to give them a last chance for participation. It will be a lot of work for Ferney to call each and every one, but we must give them ample opportunity.

We also sat down (and this time by we I mean me) and reviewed the proposals from the training institutions - I was given the responsibility of reading through the proposals and reviewing them based on content and cost. I drew up a comparison of all proposals creating common units (each proposal had different price units: $$$ for 20 people for 20 hours vs. 1 person for 120 hours vs. course total). I then drafted up follow up questions for each institution, and also selected the most appealing training courses from each institution.

Somehow seeing all of these things coming together made me super pumped, and Jorge commented on the sudden change in me - through Spanglish & sign language (I think he thinks I don't understand Spanish) he described the "before" me as wide eyed and apprehensive, and the "after" me as eager, motivated, and "pushing" - I think this was meant in a good way, as in I am making things start to roll (i.e. my insistence that we have a meeting to select youth so far interviewed).

I can't get over my level of responsibility in this program - it is amazingly empowering to be asked to approve proposals, asked to give input, make decisions, asked to mentor.... I love this program!!!! :)

Here are some pictures of my lunch:

"Pan de Yucca", which turned out to be nothing like the nice cheesey-sourdoughy pan I know and love, but more like a cross between raw pasta & stale cheetos

A little stir.

Not too sure what this is. But I ate it for desert. Coconut, thick & dry cake like thing, with dolce de leche  type stuff in the middle. Pretty decent. Especially with some serious Colombian cafe! Dark & sweet.