1. Outside insight

This week started with a usual leadership training session with the make_sense team. On the topic of prototyping, each team were tasked with presenting a mock-up of some deliverable aspect of our projects to the other teams, in order to receive applicable feedback. We decided to present our ideas for a pamphlet that will be used at the final presentation, in order to help create more visual and tactile interest for the audience. Over the course of the session, we made and received feedback for three pamphlet designs. Some very useful considerations were raised by the other Laidlaw teams, and after a discussion, conclusions were drawn. We will design entirely in Spanish, so that the members of Picacho con Futuro will be able to use the pamphlet in future to help explain the concept of a cultural cafe (as it may be unfamiliar), and how it applies to the corporation and the people within it. In terms of design, we plan to use a lot of colour, illustrations, and images as these create a more engaging frame for the information we are trying to communicate. We will also go for a three-fold design as that was the easiest for the most people to look at and understand.

2. Interruption in usual programming...

Due to several conveniently timed national holidays, this week we were able to go on a group trip to Guatape, a town just outside Medellin, and Cartagena, a city on the north coast of Colombia! While these experiences were not strictly a part of our official activities as a Laidlaw unit, they nonetheless brought us closer and demonstrated some important aspects of leadership development. We used the opportunities to understand each other better in an environment outside our usual practice. This may allow us to work more seamlessly back at Picacho where new challenges, different people, and diverse workloads will put pressure on the team.

3. Getting on

This week we were able to recruit a group of local volunteers from Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana (UPB), a university that we have been granted access to as a working space. We hope that we will be able to draw on the skills that they are developing in their education to help support the work that we are doing on this project. This coming week, we will be creating a group chat and adding them to our file drive so that they can work with us remotely, though we will also be inviting them to come to the focus groups that we hold at Picacho with the hopes of drawing on their Spanish fluency. This will force us to reevaluate our timeline and goals at this central stage of the project, adjusting expectations or working practices if needed.