Pan dulce and economic development

It took me 6 months in the field to realize just how difficult community development is. I endured 6 months of failed meetings, late meetings, long meetings, nonexistent meetings. I've heard multiple points of view from angry people, defeated people, and people in control. I've learned a lot.

In COED we have two project goals: the CO is community development and the ED is economic development. I've decided that for the next 6 months I'm going to pour my time and energy into the ED goal. It's not that I'm abandoning my community development goal- I just think ED has more tangible pay offs. People can touch money, and that's what they ultimately need to support their families. Hopefully after some success in ED, the CO will come naturally. (There's a lot of if's in that sentence, but I have hope.)

I have ideas for groups, projects, grants, and so much more. There really is a lot of opportunity in my community and I always see new start-ups looking for development. The first step in my ED takeover is doing a slew of business diagnostics in the community. PCES is improving our MRE (monitoring, reporting and evaluation) tools, so in order to give good feedback I need to get out the clipboard and clicky pen.

Here's some photos from my first business diagnostic with Nina Orbelina, the woman in my community who bakes bread and makes pupusas. She's an intelligent woman and I really get along with her kids. I buy her bread every Saturday along with the rest of the community. It's great dipped in coffee! After figuring the costs of every ingredient, we found out that Orbelina makes about $40 every Saturday (for 6+ hours of work). She was very satisfied with that number. Check out the bread process:

Whipping up 60 eggs.

Teamwork! Mother/daughter style. 

Mixing the eggs into 50lbs of flour.

A lot of stuff goes into the mix, like 3lbs of fresh cut pig fat.

Greasing up the latas with more fat.

Scooping it in.

She has about 60 latas of different sizes.

The oven. Looks familiar? 

Putting in the latas. 

Each lata gets a healthy dose of sugar on top. They don't call it pan dulce for nothing!

Finished product!