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------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------{ November 19, 2006 }
My site: Juncalito
I just got back to Santo Domingo from visiting my site, which is located in Juncalito. It is a little town in the mountains of the Cordillera Central (one of the DR's several mountain ranges), in the middle of the country. I will be working with the Asociacion de Caficultores de Juncalito. I didn't really want to work with a producer group, but my counterparts are really nice and this site is probably the closest thing to Jarabacoa there is out of our group. It's nice that I won't be baking in the southern part of the country for the next 2 years and instead get to enjoy the crisp air and beautiful mountain scenery. This was just a preliminary visit, and I'll be going back for good in a week, when I will start to do my organizational and community diagnostics to figure out what exactly I'll be doing for the next two years.
The Association wants more sales outlets and to expand exporting (from my basic understanding at this point), but from what I gathered in the short time I had this week they really need some work on Mission, Vision and goal creating, as well as organization and fundraising. I'll have more on this later...I won't really know what I'm doing until I have a chance to analyze the organization completely.
My family is really nice. The mom is a teacher at the school and the dad has a colmado. They have 3 kids- 1 16 yr old girl, 15 yr old boy and 10 yr old girl. I met some people in the community, but I will admit to being nervous at this point. It was easy in Jarabacoa because I also had 3 other Americans with me but now I will be completely on my own and although I've done the whole move to another place without knowing anyone thing a few times, this is completely different. I am excited though to finally know where I'm going to be and to get started.
Posted by katie on November 19, 2006 01:35 PM | Permalink
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