The Chinese philosopher Lao Tse once said, “The more you know the less you understand.” It’s sort of a beautiful yet annoying paradigm. This philosophy has never rung more true in my life than over the last week. I am on vacation from volunteering in Santiago right now, traveling[...]
Archive for July, 2010
A Side of Books With My Carrots, Please
Uruguay and neighbor Argentina routinely boast the highest adult literacy rates in Latin America, around 98%. Behind the statistic lie the tables after tables of books at Montevideo’s Sunday market, itself on a street lined with antique shops and used bookstores; behind the statistic wait the [...]
If I Won the Lottery Tomorrow: Why Everyone Should Volunteer
I think it should be mandatory for every university degree to include a volunteer component, whether locally or internationally. Why? I have recently returned to my home in Canada after eight months of working at a Costa Rican microfinance organization. Most of my friends have university degrees and[...]
Marketing Techniques
How do you interest someone in becoming a sponsor for a child in your program? How do you make your program more interesting to this potential sponsor than the tens of hundreds of other child-sponsor programs? How do you convince someone that the needs of your kids are great enough to warrant thei[...]
We Dance If We Want To (so why don’t we?)
Having been immersed in Latin culture, I’ve realized just how fantastic the skill of dance is. What’s great about it here is that regular people, not those with training or extensive practice, often break out into dances with style, with form, like the merengue or salsa. As it was explai[...]
Transferring Your Organization to New Hands
The two new Program Managers (PMs) of GirlSportWorks arrive in just a handful of days, and we will have two weeks of orientation before we pass on the program from our management to theirs. Preparation for their arrival, however, has already been in progress for a number of weeks. Below are a few ti[...]
