1.1: AE projects

Check out the Duke Engage home page within the next week - our project is currently featured there.

So, those of you who might have been expecting a post any day now have been twiddling disappointed thumbs for 2 weeks - I apologize; between being sick in week 1 and working/exploring Santiago in week 2, there just hasn't been much time. Since I need to informally backdate these posts, I'll use the numbering system "week.post#" for posts henceforth. An asterisk (*) will denote any theme which I will discuss in more detail in later posts. The links to Jordan and Grant's blogs are in my first post, "Introduction".

I'll start with Monday the 8th, my first day of work at AE. At this point I had just settled in with my host parents, Paula Castillo and Jesús Noriega, on Sunday. The first day of work was light - the morning was an orientation spent introducing us to AE and to Chilean slang*, and after pizza for lunch, we received our project/location assignments. We were all assigned to work in one of the Centros de Emprendimiento, AE's community-oriented centers for providing their trademark courses, business counsulting, computer labs, and other resources. Grant Alport and Jordan Stone were assigned to design teacher's manuals for one of AE's courses, as currently, only one course has this standard while the rest vary entirely with the volunteer-professor's whim (see Grant's blog posts "The Next 8 weeks" and "Why I am here"). Liz Clipp and Rachel Hanessian were assigned to plan an AE alumni reunion and more generally work to foster a sense of community within AE and a way to share best practices; Elana Berger and I were assigned to collect information on how AE is impacting its students that have businesses, analyze the resulting data to draw conclusions, and help with the design/implementation of web profiles for the microenterprises. Grant and Jordan are assigned to CE Santiago-Norponiente (abbreviated CES), which is within the traditional boundaries of Santiago, while the rest of us are at CE Puente Alto, in the Santiago comuna/self-contained city of Puente Alto (CEPA).