Roller coaster

A roller coaster week like none other. Establishing an NGO is not easy, and this week has shown that. Damn is it frustrating. Its not that things have gone bad, its just slow.....

After the initial furor about the first sponsored position in PW, it has become clear that the funding body, CORFO, has decided to delay their decision about Lakutaia another month. Its just typical really. Hey........why don't we keep a bunch of people hanging on by a thread for another month! We are still fairly optimistic that this fund will be awarded, but its just that the certainty is not there yet. I have seen Randy Twyman loads this week. He is the new manager of Lakutaia whom informed me about this.

I participated in the "Jornadas de Analisis Turistica" organized by SERNATUR and Corfo-Pti. They were taken forward during this week at a really nice venue just outside Punta Arenas. Loads of people where there like, Randy Twyman, the governor of Antarctica Chilena, Fernando Paredes, all the ministerial representatives, people from CORFO and SERNATUR....well, just about everyone. It was more informative than really interactive. But it was good to meet people and see what progress is being made in tourism on a regional level.

Whats clear, is that its really on peoples minds. Whether this effort is all coordinated or not....well that's not so clear to me.

I asked about the issue of connectivity between PW and Ushuaia and got the answer from the minister of public works and the governor, that for this season coming up things should be sorted out. I don't believe them.....but i also discussed this issue with AustroChile and well, there should be some political clout from this sector.

At the sane time i finally finished and presented the project i developed on Beagle Channel development. This was presented to SERNATUR and its main objective is to create a common tourism product between PW and Ushuaia. The director likes it, and mentioned it during the meetings!

An answer from Cerro Castillo is still pending on whether we can take forward the necessary work to develop a tourism development strategy. We presented our idea about two weeks ago.

I have also been working on a funding application. Marieke identified this fund last week and mentioned it to us. Its called Impulsis and its from NL. Initially it seems like a good opportunity as the themes are relevant and NL also likes it! So great!

Also this week we realized that it will not be possible to re start our activities in PW or PN by September or October. There has been an incredible low amount of applications for this period. So basically we have decided that it is more feasible for January. We have to discuss this today. But i have to say that although PN seemed to offer a great amount of opportunities in terms of sponsorships for students,......i did not get that feeling when i talked to the stakeholders from there...and there has not been real progress in this theme for PN........

Anyway, we got some ideas on the go with CORFO, and lets see what this week brings us. OH! And i forgot to say that we finished the first stage of the SERCOTEC evaluation. I did the presentation of the results and it was all quite interesting. We also applied for the evaluation for a further 41 Business plans focused on tourism only. We Won but its not much money. Man.......its peanuts...almost......ok, pistacchio nuts......

Also we are applying for another job for SERCOTEC....(we are on a roll), that's for facilitating 10 ME in the implementation of their business plans. This would be for 6 months and would be more money but we have to win the licitation still. But its right up our street! They are ME owned by indigenous people and the winners of a Capital Semilla competition focused on this theme.

Ok that's it for now.......Cheers