Legacy!

My Legacy in Argentina

I am so happy and excited that I had to write this blog entry. Today I finished my project and truly left a legacy in Argentina! The last 6 months I have networked, sympathized and analyzed a mountain of information with a large number of people all over the city for social movements, cooperatives, and entrepreneurial resources. I was able to write and win a grant proposal for a consulting project to work with a few of the local comedors in Buenos Aires province leading workshops in social entrepreneurship for cooperatives.

After the research part of this project was over the following two months have been grueling travelling all over the city, designing, researching and presenting multiple workshops in Team Management, Accounting, Marketing, Cost Management and Operations Management. Today was the final workshop and I introduced all of the cooperatives to one another and added a special guest, from La Obra de Padre Cajade. They are a well known and very large social entrepreneurial group in the province. They have three orphanages of varying ages and five businesses. The amazing thing is that the businesses are used as a form of apprenticeship above the education they receive in the orphanage (which includes classrooms) and the profits from these businesses are all reinvested into the orphanages to create more opportunities for the children. Definitely check out their website, although it’s only in Spanish but if you can read it, you cannot help but be impressed! (obradelpadrecajade.org.ar).

It was incredible to hear the stories from the Padre Cajade representatives as they told us of their time growing up in the orphanage homes of this amazing Priest, Father Padre Cajade (RIP) who literally changed the lives of so many children. He truly helped the people he met and brought hundreds of kids off of the street, rather than just giving them alms. These two men are extraordinary examples of the Father's work. They were taken off the street when they were starving, addicted to porro (remnants of cocaine and a popular and lethal drug in Argentina) and homeless. They grew up and were educated in the orphanages, and began to work for the non-profit printing press and magazine. They are now in their 30’s and still run the printing press and live and help out at the orphanages, 20+ years later.

All of the cooperative groups chatted back and forth sharing stories and asking interesting questions about the others work. It was the perfect networking session as I really think they each learned from each other. At the end of the workshop, they even coordinated to work with and buy from each other! The sewing cooperative and bakery found a new client in Padre Cajade.

Now if that wasn’t amazing enough, apparently the people at my office in CEP started talking amongst themselves while we were in the conference room, and the other departments took notice of my project. My boss proudly told them about everything I had done and showed them a copy of my beautiful manual. Now the projects department wants an extra intern from FSD to continue my workshops with them in the future!!!

I wish I could attach the 50 page manual that I wrote (in SPANISH!) and show you exactly what I did, but unfortunately its 10MB and is too big to upload (even to Google docs). Everything turned out perfect in the end and all of my hard work and multiple marathon miles of walking paid off. The manual is my pride and joy and will help SOOOO many people even after I am gone! I am full of pride and humility at the same time as these women of the cooperatives and the incredible people at Padre Cajade have truly made this time in Argentina worth every moment!

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