This penultimate week in Mexico City has been focused on bringing together everything we have worked on over the past few weeks and delivering our final recommendations to Hagamos Composta. After weeks of research, discussions and analysis, we finalised our report and deliverables before presenting our pitch to the other scholars. It was really rewarding to finally see everything come together.
A large part of this final stage was deciding what to include and also what to leave out. We had accumulated a large amount of information and ideas over the past few weeks, so condensing this into a clear and concise final report was one of the biggest challenges. I also finalised my analysis of the survey responses, creating a summary with graphs and key findings to help Hagamos Composta better understand its customer base. Alongside this, we brought together our sponsorship research and operational friction-point mapping into a set of practical recommendations for the organisation.
We then presented our final pitch to the other scholars. After spending so much time working on the project, it was great to finally present our findings, and the pitch went really well. For me, the biggest achievement was managing to pull everything together in the final few days. With so much content to work through, learning how to prioritise the most important findings and communicate them clearly was a valuable experience that I will take forward into future projects.
Reflecting on the project as a whole, the Laidlaw value that has stood out most to me has been ambition. We wanted to make sure that our work went beyond simply identifying Hagamos Composta’s challenges and instead provided practical recommendations that could support its future growth. At the same time, completing the project required a lot of determination, particularly as we approached the final deadline and had to turn weeks of work into a concise final report. This project also reinforced the importance of collaboration. Working closely with the Hagamos Composta team and volunteers throughout the project helped us understand the organisation from different perspectives, ensured that our recommendations were aligned with Hagamos Composta’s values and could be useful beyond the end of our project.
Outside of the project, we made sure to make the most of our final full week in Mexico City. On Friday, we went to a Lucha Libre fight, which was really entertaining. The combination of the atmosphere, costumes and dramatic stunts was amazing and the gymnastic ability behind some of the moves was crazy. We then went to an outdoor club afterwards, making for a very memorable start to the weekend. On Saturday morning, we visited El Bazar Sabado before heading to Xochimilco for a boat trip. We spent the afternoon travelling along the canals, trying Mexican drinks, playing drinking games with music and attempting to ‘scorpion’ tequila, while also chatting to the local guides along the way. It was a really fun afternoon and a great way to experience Mexico City’s history as a group.
Sunday was spent exploring more of the historic centre. We visited the Zocolo, explored some of the archaeological sites, stopped for ice cream and visited Palacio de Bellas Artes. The following three days were largely dedicated to finishing our work, although we did of course continue many rooftop evenings, including watching Obsession which was terrifying and going out on Wednesday after finishing our work. On Thursday evening, we finished the week with a trip to the Azteca stadium to watch Club America play San Diego. The atmosphere inside the stadium was insane with the fans singing and playing music throughout the entire game.
Finishing the project has left me feeling both relieved and sad that it’s coming to an end. Over the past few weeks, Hagamos Composta has gone from being an organisation we knew very little about to one that we have spent a significant amount of time understanding, working with and learning from. I am proud of what we have produced as a team and particularly pleased to see how much our initial research has developed into a final set of recommendations.