UC Davis Blum Center for Developing Economies

Today, consisted of mostly familiarizing myself with the office and the people at STRIVE. I had a chance to meet with my supervisor and brainstormed a list of ideas I had of how I can contribute to the program. In this case, what new social media can I introduce STRIVE and their Fatherhood program to? The organization already has a Facebook page, but there isn’t a specific page for the Fatherhood program, which enables fathers who have gone/ are going through the program to connect with one another and be updated with the latest events. There is a possibility that a Tumblr page will be in the works as a way to document day to day events as well as provide additional pages with resources that the clients can have access to. In addition to the social media aspects of the program, I am assisting STRIVE with helping them locate the areas of New York that have been affected by Hurricane Sandy and find resources using hitesite.org to compile and have. We will eventually reach out to t...

Today was my first day working with STRIVE, an NGO located in NYC that I will be interning with this summer. The day consisted of many orientations, not only for myself, but also for the future clients of the program. STRIVE was very welcoming and it turns out I’m the youngest member on staff. Since it is federally funded, it turns out that the program, Stronger Fathers, Strong Families, is not only for fathers but also for mothers as well. There are three parts to the program: Embracing Parenthood (how one becomes a better parent for one’s child), Healthy relationship building with one’s partner, Job readiness. What is awesome about this program is that it helps clients to prepare for job interviews by providing MetroCards to them (limited up to 3 interviews), helping them with resume building, giving them the attire needed, etc. If a client does not own professional attire (such as a suit and tie), STRIVE refers a location in Queens to them to get clothes for f...

June 5, 2013   UC Davis Veterinary students and Community Health Workers from Sabana Grande, Nicaragua engage in discussions about Vector Borne disease awareness and prevention. We conducted our first One Health workshop today in the rural community of Sabana Grande in northwestern Nicaragua! One of the poorest areas in the country. Believing that education is the most sustainable form of community development, we have, for the past months, been working to develop the best strategies for leading discussions between animal health care workers (the "veterinary promoters") and human health care workers (the " brigadistas ") within the community of Sabana Grande.   Veterinary student Leah Colyer (left) and Community Health Worker Reyna Isabel Lopez Rizo (right) discuss their concerns about the availability of water treatment products rural Nicaragua. The two groups of community workers had recently formed a "Health and Welfare Cooperation...

Vista of Guatemala highlands with corn Yesterday, the inevitable happened: Elana got sick after eating some very questionable chicken soup while we were in the mountains. I was still feeling okay, so I went on our planned trip to the Zona Reyna (North Uspantan) by myself to meet another Peace Corps volunteer and talk to cardamom growers.  The drive was gorgeous, and luckily shorter than expected (3.5 hours instead of 5).  We went up, through, and around the mountains before heading down into a semi tropical (but still mountainous zone).  Luckily Obidio has a big, 4 wheel drive car, because the road was ridiculous.  We drove through a couple of small rivers and around a lot of big rocks.  Apparently, the road is better than it used to be, but some of the farmers I talked to still identified it as their main farming constraint, since it makes access to any outside markets pretty difficult.  Cardamom grows wild along the road side ...

A lot happened this week. We visited most of the nine wastewater treatment plants around Lake Atitlan here in Guatemala and took detailed notes about each. It seems only half of the wastewater in the major cities is treated and even then very poorly and much less than in rural areas. View of Lake Atitlan from the cemetery in Solola The fault doesn't really lie with any particular entity as most everyone is aware of the issue and has the right intentions. It appears that money is lacking for many infrastructure scenarios and the government's limits on nutrients in effluent is higher relative to the US (for example 3 mg/L of phosphorus is acceptable, while most places in the US do not allow anything over 0.1 mg/L). We need to look more into these limits. The staff at the municipalities for each city were very kind in taking time to give us tours of the plants and I was heartened to see that the members of the municipalities understood the weak points in the treatment (t...

 Road past Chicaman It has been an exciting few days! Yesterday we had a free morning, so we tried to figure out what to do in Uspantan.  Whenever we Googled the name, the page refused to load... which was appropriate, because it turns out there isn't really much to do in Uspantan.  We wandered around town (all of it), read our books, and then met the Peace Corps volunteer who took us to lunch (she also loaned us her guidebook, so we are now generally better informed about the options).  Our driver came for lunch too, and then we headed to his home town, which is about 30 minutes away.  On the way, we met with the host family of the former Peace Corps volunteer who connected us with our driver.  It was fun to meet them, and it also cleared up some confusion!  When Elana called Cara´s host dad, she told him we´d gotten his name from ´La Cara´... which in Spanish means ´the face!´.  Understandably, he was pretty confused, and we were co...

Chicken King chicken is in fact the most practical way to say "I love you"- so far the best add we've seen in Guatemala, or maybe anywhere for that matter. We haven't yet had the pleasure of consuming King Chicken, but yesterday we did eat some delicious chicken in our very own Chinese food restaurant here in Uspantan! It was a unique experience that may have involved hearing the chicken be killed, and definitely involved the tallest bottle of soda I have ever seen (photo left) and consuming chop suey in home made corn tortillas.  After lunch we left for a community called Sicache, where we talked with a small group of women in a community center. We also spoke with the ex-host family of the Peace Corps volunteer that is helping us here. They had some pretty adorable cats and the papaya tree with the biggest fruit I have ever seen! They also had some corn silos and we were able to observe a really interesting postharvest pest, which seems to be a type of corn beet...