Tierra del Fuego

Wow! Time does fly. Its already the end of august and i can feel spring is on its way. I was in natales at the start of the week to do the field evaluations of the business plans, and it was very beautiful. It is getting warmer and the wind is starting to pick up. That's a definite sign!

We also received a new volunteer in natales. We don't have an office yet, but Maria, (from spain), decided to come anyway. She is an environmental engineer and studied for the last year in Santiago. She was going to live in nateles for 3 months anyway so looked for something to do.

She is interested in the waste management work, and has been looking through what imke did, and also meeting the stakeholders of natales.

We won another project with SERCOTEC!. No checking business plan though. This one is focused on facilitating a group of pre selected artisans develop areas of their business. This is mainly focused on the marketing aspect of their business. Its a 5 month project but the first is the intensive part. The rest is just follow up work.

We also applied for a project with CONAMA, (Comision de Medio Ambiente). This is a very big project and is focused on the development of about 250KM of new trekking trails as part of the Sendero de Chile project. This project is national and its objective is to create a trekking trail along the whole length of chile, (5000km). Through this trail they hope to create alternative tourism activities. We applied to this through another foundation and the answer is pending. What we would have to do is the whole participative component of the project. Propose activities for the trail, etc.


But good, should be interesting. We are definitely starting to feel a lack of capacity here because there is actually a third project which is super interesting but i don't think we can take it on. The thing is that when a project licitation is delayed, and then re tendered, the actual hand in dates of the project stay the same. So basically this project was two months long initially, the tender was delayed a month and now you have to do teh same amount of work, but in a month.

Sheila is working away and did her first workshop with us. It was really good, and i am super glad she is here. She definitely has some good views. Oh! And we decided we will be changing our name. It is not sure to what though.....so if anyone has any ideas......this is also affecting the speed at which the legal process is going because a name change should be done sooner than later. Other wise it will be very expensive.

I'm off to tierra del fuego this weekend! Have to check a business plan!

More projects to choose from.....

I think i´m smoking more. I don't know if its the dodgy belmonts which are lighter, or maybe I'm just stressed. Things are very busy lately, and maybe you have noticed. As the last title read, Chile is the country of projects. Public.......private, you name it and in all sorts of topics and themes. Basically its contracting work, which in the case that you win, will provide you with an income for the time the project lasts, which is up to 4.5 months usually.

This system provides you with an array of possibilities which you have to compete for. It is really quite exhausting but "fair". Writing up project proposals has become my daily activity for me. The themes are, (besides evaluating business plans): Facilitating ME in commercializing their products, the design and development of an integral development plan for 400km of trekking trails in the region, and facilitating the design of a strategy for a local foundation focused on innovation. Pretty interesting; all of it.

We lost the CORFO project i mentioned in my last post. After the almost forceful inclusion of third parties in our proposal the damn thing wasn't handed in in time by that same third party. So we lost it.....and it was totally beyond our control....incredible.

Shame really, but what does happen quite often is that the tender for a particular project is declared void for some reason or another. Usually administrative. This is both a pain in the ass when you applied for it, or an opportunity when you didn't....and this has happened three times now. In two cases it has been an opportunity, and in one, a pain in the ass.....

Oh, and we decided against applying for the project focused on beaver eradication because it just seemed beyond our capacity. As such we are applying for the above projects as partners and not as the main applicants.

We have also almost finished the Impulsis application with Marieke and i sincerely hope that we can count on the usual tidiness and transparency that Holland is known for during the application process.

Sheila has been working hard at analyzing what we do and how we do it. She is very knowledgeable in CSR in Brazil. For now here work has been focused on gathering information about the CSR status in Chile.

And changing the subject a little bit.....

I have been in touch with some old friends this week. Serious, i think i received three emails from people i hadn't heard of for years...it was really great. One had an incredible story to tell me.....here parents just moved house in Maastricht and when they had gone on holiday the gardener found 7, yes 7, human skeletons buried in the garden.....can you believe it?!.....can you!?.....check it out...... but remember that its in dutch....

I have added some pics to my flikr account...so have a look and i can tell you that the week coming is busy. We will have to start visiting ME this week all over the place! PW, PN, PA and Porvenir....ah yes, a new volunteer will be arriving to continue the work on waste management.