Bye bye Jamaica; RESPECT!

I know I haven’t blogged in a while. I intended to blog at least once a week but the last few weeks have been uneventful. Today is my last day at JYBT and, as excited I am to go back home, I’m a little sad to leave JYBT and Jamaica behind.

Unfortunately my time at JYBT was not entirely well spent. There were awesome days when I consulted entrepreneurs in some crazy jobs like the pig farmer (which I got to visit), the leingere lady or the pimento farmer. It was also awesome to conduct that Marketing Workshop with about 17 entrepreneurs all listening and taking notes. But I also had the other (many) days where I had no one to consult and I was sitting around chatting with my friends on facebook. Those days were terrible not only because it was boring; they were terrible because those days I didn’t get to make a difference. Many times I thought about how we could get more appointments with entrepreneurs… but the more I thought about it the more I decided to not look for more appointments. I can’t force my help on people, I can only make it available and it is up to them to take it.

But I leave Jamaica with the sense that I did at least a little to make a difference in the businesses of some of these entrepreneurs. I think that now some of them are now better equipped than their peers and competitors to assess and address the needs of their customers. But I also learned a lot here; I finally was able to connect how businesses and micro financing is a vehicle to improve standards of living and break the poverty cycle. I was able to see with my own eyes how the pig farmer (who graciously took us to her farm) has a better standard of living than she did in the past. She has migrated from a farm in St. Thomas to the city of Kingston… her family will have better opportunities than the ones she had and hopefully, down the road, that would lead to better and higher education for those that come after her.

I was also able to see the face of poverty and how it affects and threatens the future of children. Its great to have social programs to feed them but something needs to be done to keep children out of the streets and in school. The question is how to make it happen.

Respecto Mon

But I think that the most important learning has come at the personal level. It’s scary to see how easy is to look away when you are surrounded by poverty. I have experienced it first hand; I grew up in a city with a poverty level of 18% in a country where almost 35% of people leave below the poverty line… and in all these years in the US I have done nothing about it. I’m not saying that I will be going to dedicate my life to fixing these issues in Peru but in the future I would like to provide help in some type of way.  I have a couple of things in mind; we’ll see how things work out in the future.

In a completely different subject; this project has allowed me to get to know better my two awesome travel buddies. It has been fun to see some of their funny quirks that makes them fun to be around. I know I lucked out traveling with Aditi (Nadine or Didi) and Emily… I know I’ll miss them but I also know that I will see them soon!

I think this is all I have for my very last blog entry. Bye-bye Jamaica; RESPECT!