Days 16,17 & 18: Teach a man to fish

On Monday, the group separated into two teams. While team "Iniciativa" drove up to Leon, the cultural and intellectual center of Nicaragua, our team, team "Impacto", drove up to the "coffee city" Matagalpa in the Northern Highlands of Nicaragua. After a three hour ride during which we entertained ourselves by playing "20 questions", we finally arrived at our hostel "La Buena Onda". There, we were welcomed by our host, a cute fat bunny that, as we would soon find out, was going to hop around the hostel during the entire next week.

Cute bunny!

After settling in and eating some delicious mango chicken at our hostel, we toured a little bit around Matagalpa and saw the parks as well as the giant white cathedral near our hostel.

La Buena Onda, hammocks

More of our hostel

The common room

The atrium

My first Mango smoothie in Matagalpa

La Buena Onda Café

Ben, Peter and Greg waiting for their food

Maddie and Pauline

Emily and Me

Maracuya jugo/ Passion Fruit juice

Mango Chicken

The next morning, we took the public bus to San Ramón, a community two hours away from Matagalpa. There, we met with Jessenia Diaz, one of the women in charge of "Las Mujeres Ecologistas de la Pita", a business created in 2004, dedicated to the fabrication of recycled paper products. All the materials, including the fiber, flowers etc...are manually collected by the women and transformed into one-of-a-kind products.

Jessenia Diaz

The Atelier

Paper "frame"

Paper "mixer"

Me making paper

My final paper

Paper "press"

After watching Jessenia demonstrate to us the process of making recycled paper products, we got a chance to try it out on our own.

Then, we discussed with her what type of problems their business was facing in order to gain a better understanding of the areas we could improve. Although she didn't have a precise idea of what she wanted us to do, she made it clear that their business model needed improvement in terms of marketing and general communication with clients. That and the lack of a detailed inventory made us decide upon three separate deliverables: A product catalog tailored to attract more clients, flayers that could be distributed in the main tourist locations in Matagalpa, and finally a detailed inventory of all the products, to keep track of their designs and better manage their sales.

While we were doing that, the other half of team "Impacto" was working with Fernando, the man in charge of "ADITUR", a local sustainable tourism agency and helped him set up a professional facebook page.

Recycled paper products

Libretas grande

Agendas

Separadores

Libretas pequeñas

Trajetas

Libretas

After an intense photo shoot, during which we captured the entirety of the products to use later in the catalog, we walked around the tourism office where numerous local artisans where exposed and took the bus back to Matagalpa. Once arrived, we got lunch at a typical Nicaraguan "buffet" and went back to the hostel to work on our projects.

Paintings from local artists of San Ramon

 Jewelry made out of huayruro and other seeds

Dresses made out of plastic bags

While Emily and I worked on putting together the product catalog and flayers for "Las Mujeres Ecologistas", Greg and Pauline worked on the inventory. Additionally, we put together a training presentation with the goal of teaching the group of women how to maintain and update the catalog and inventory and generally how to use simple Microsoft Word tools to improve their marketing strategy.     

After three days of working on the catalog, the inventory, the flayers and the final presentation on how to better market their products, we arrived at our last consulting meeting in San Ramón on Friday ready to help Jessenia and the other women of "Las Mujeres Ecologistas" get their small business off the ground.