Loja, Ecuador
Sunday, August 7, 2005
This week, I visited my future site in Loja. I will work for the Social Development division of the Municipality of the city of Loja. Loja is a beautiful city in the Southern part of Ecuador, located in a valley in the Andes Mountains near the Peruvian Border. I work in the urban and rural communities of the city. One part of my job is community outreach by working with groups of youths, teaching the basic life skills, such as leadership, self-esteem, and study habits. I also teach these topics to groups of men and women and their children that live on the street as well as groups of recovering alcoholics. Alcoholism is a grave problem in Ecuadorian society. Among these topics, I also teach basic health and sanitation practices. My main focus down here is my work with around 15 community banks in the surrounding areas. These banks get together on a regular basis to save up their money and give out loans to members of the association. What I do is help start up new community banks in my province and also maintain the existing groups. Among these groups, I teach them how to function, teaching basic business skills. I teach these groups basic business skills, so that in the future we will be able to start up a small business or some form of income generation. Many of these people of subsistence farmers, or market workers that barely get by on what they have.
Loja is beautiful. I am very excited to be living here for the next couple of years. The 12 hr overnight bus trip through the mountains wasn't a highlight of the trip.
Upon arrival in Tabacundo, I could recognize that it was going to be very hard to leave my family in Tabacundo...
