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!