Part of the reason I haven’t posted anything here in about a week [aside from the fact that I am just a bit inconsiderate sometimes—sorry, Mama] is that I have been really busy. Monday morning, through what I feel quite confident calling a “wink from God,” I met up a Ulysses Team [it’s a leadership development program] from Price Waterhouse Cooper [pretty sure they do investment banking…and do it pretty well] who have been sent here to work on the replication model for self-sustaining education. Que bendicione, no?!
I was walking to the Parador to help Mirta in the kitchen because the usual cook’s daughter was in the hospital with appendicitis. Someone I hadn’t seen before jogged past and I said “hola” as usual. They responded with “good morning” which threw me off, making me realize that it had been a good week since I had heard anyone speak English [Tim having gone off to Argentina and Jorge being on vacation]. The group came to the Parador for lunch and for some inexplicable [aside from calling it what it was] reason, I really wanted to talk with them. Not having any convenient excuse, I simply wandered over to the table and invited myself to lunch.
Turns out that might have been the best choice I’ve made this whole trip. We quickly discovered that we were all trying to do the same thing—and that we each had experience the others lacked [they with all sorts of business models and best practices, me with the foundation, the school and the students]. We’ve had a very productive couple of days, and have now the start of a list of principles of self-sustaining education, as well as a skeletal accreditation system for the Teach a Man to Fish Network [not directly tied to Fundacion Paraguaya, but working closely together]. If anyone is interested, I’ll send you the documents—they’re currently a bit long to post here. I feel really good about both the work and the connections. And really grateful for the prompting.
