It's hard to believe, but I'm already at the end of my second week working with makesense and Genera Territorios in Mexico City!
First, our group leaders Kenia and Aide guided us through a series of workshops on the most important methodological tenets of designing and implementing successful projects. First up was the concept of design thinking, which is a human-centered approach to problem solving that seeks to tackle the root cause of the issue based on concrete needs, rather than assumptions. We considered the five stages of the creative process - empathise, define, ideate, prototype, test - and how we could apply this to our own work. I enjoyed the working with other scholars to develop our ideas together, as it encouraged me to reflect more deeply on concepts I had previously taken for granted.
The next defining aspect of this week was meeting the volunteers we are going to be guiding through this project! We organised an in-person meeting and definitely went into it feeling apprehensive, as none of us had ever been in a real leadership position before. Mainly, we were nervous about the age and experience gap between us and our volunteers, as well as the potential language barrier. However, the meeting ran very smoothly! We're now looking forward to working closely over the next few weeks and utilising their valuable skills in computing and administration to further our project.
Of course, there were also lots of developments regarding our project with Genera Territorios. Due to some miscommunications and misunderstandings, our group left an online meeting on Wednesday feeling confused about the deliverables we were supposed to be creating. However, we tried not to let this get us down and I'm proud of how we took this curveball in our stride and developed a new idea instead! Coming off the back of another meeting today, which ran more smoothly, we are all feeling much more positive and have finally been able to begin developing our prototype: a chatbot for WhatsApp, accompanied by user manual and transfer guide for facilitators. Although we'll have our work cut out to finish this before another meeting on Wednesday, I'm excited about the challenge!
We all also enjoyed lots of non-work-related activities throughout the week, including countless tacos, the best pastries we've ever eaten, a heaving and very pro-Norway World Cup fan zone, a trip to the pyramids of Teotihuacan and a few obligatory shots of tequila for true cultural immersion...