bread!

I'm jumping ahead of myself in my blog sequence, as I should be writing about the end of my vacation at home with my family and the crazy trip from Orrville, Ohio to my apartment door in Santa Rosa in 13 hours.

 

But, you're going to have to wait because my first day back to work was awesome.

"What is this?" you must be thinking, faithful blog reader. And it is weird coming from me. But it was a really good day! My coworker, Oscar, missed me like crazy (his words, not mine) and we filled the morning catching up on what is going on--and we have a lot going on at ACDIM. Between training in bread-making and basic cooking classes for our women's groups, coordinating with USAID and starting some garden projects, scheduling all of our visits, a site visit with Heifer Project, meeting with contacts at the tech school in Santa Rosa...well, its all pretty exciting and keeping us on our toes.

We had a visit to Plan Grande scheduled in the afternoon (news to me) so after running around town, I grabbed a bite to eat (it's slim pickin' when you live alone and just got back from 3 weeks of travel!) and we headed to the campo.

A bit of back story--the group of women we visited today had received a 2 day intensive training in bread-making about 3 weeks ago when I was in Teguc for MCC stuff. I meant to post about that, but haven't gotten pictures up yet. You can check it out on ACDIM's Facebook page if you'd like (and "Like" us :). So, Oscar and I have been talking extensively about how we will get these micro-businesses up and running and how much we are going to have to encourage the women to commit to working hard.

The meeting started slow and we spent lots of time handing out the diplomas from the bread-making workshop. We made announcements about the next class they will receive in basic cooking and moved into the main topic for the day. The whole time the women are shuffling around and getting the snack ready for after the meeting. What they did not tell us until the very end is that we were going to enjoy bread they had made and that the rest of the bread on the table was for sale at 20 Lempiras per bag ($1). Then they told us this was the second week they had made bread to sell and they are using the profits each week to buy ingredients for the next. 2 women will be in charge each week so everyone shares equally the responsibility.

We were blown away! And so excited! We have been working hard to coordinate training and resources for our groups. The bread workshop was the first step, but we honestly thought it would be like pulling teeth to get them actually working together as a small business. Without a word to us they just...started! And the bread is delicious! And they have had no trouble selling (at least from what we know so far).

the bread! it is really tasty.

hamming it up with the diplomas

 If you know me at all, you know that this is what I get really passionate about. I can't begin to tell you how proud I am of these women. I know its a small start, just a drop in the bucket, really. But to see them take initiative and just jump in is really exciting for me and our organization. My hope and prayer is that this will be the start of something good for them. That they will be successful, one small step at a time. They are so humble, and many of them very shy, but you can see how proud they were to hold their diplomas and show off the bread they were selling. Gives me goosebumps!

Also, very randomly, as most things in Honduran life are, there was a man from a TV channel and his camera woman wandering around outside our meeting (we are in the boonies, ok...this is not common). And he ended up interviewing Oscar about our organization and what we are doing with the women in this community. I posed for a picture with their bread (ridiculous, I know...but at least I sold the man their last bag!!) Of course, ideally we would have loved the president of the group to be the one interviewed, but we are taking things one step at a time. A little publicity can't hurt their new enterprise, right??