It's Friday the 31st of July and I am officially coming to the end of my 4th week of my time in Mexico City with Rennueva and MakeSense!
Being two-thirds of the way through my project, I am beginning to reflect on the experiences I have had and knowledge I have gained, as we come towards the final stretch of the programme.
The week began with our one-on-one mentoring sessions, which are really beneficial for personal reflections on our progress, and allows me to personally see where I have progressed in the past couple of weeks, along with where I still have work to do.
Following this, all four groups went through a process of collective feedback from Keni and Aide, along with questions from the rest of the group. Whilst this process can sometimes involve intense and difficult questions, these have allowed me to assess areas where we are lacking and need to improve on, but in this case we also managed to better answer questions we hadn't been able to previously, which showed our progress. For me, any question that can't be answered only strengthens my resolve to work harder and ensure that all our points are covered in the project.
Throughout the rest of the week, we held an incredibly productive call with Hector and his team at Rennueva. Everytime we come to a new call or meeting, we leave with a new set of tasks and sense of productivity. This week we went over the previous week's research, and as always this was a really important process that left us with more to work on, building on previous research.
We also had a visit from the Genera Territories team, who gave us an incredibly informative session on the importance of bees and wildlife, along with some honey tasting which tasted amazing! As always it is very interesting to learn about the work that some of my other teammates are doing in their own respective projects.
We were also lucky enough to spend some time off travelling to Las Estacas, a stunning natural park and resort outside of Mexico City, that I can truly say is one of the most beautiful experiences I have had abroad. If you ever find yourself in Mexico, I would say it is an absolute must!
Approaching the final two weeks, I am incredibly grateful for the experiences I have had, both culturally and education wise. Being able to merge learning about new project management methods, whilst carrying out my own project and research tasks, along with culturally enriching myself and visiting places I would have never been able to do previously, is such a rewarding experience that I will cherish for the rest of my life.
Onto the final stretch!