Hello again! For this post, I will be reflecting on the past week, July 12th-19th, the second week of my LiA project working with Picacho Con Futuro in Comuna 6 of Medellín, Colombia. We made very good progress on our first deliverable, and are working on our second one right now! 

Additionally, the banner photo of this week's reflection is a photo of the café Antimateria in Laureles, but I'll get into all of that in a bit.

What went well?

Well, like I already stated, we made good progress on our project. We planned out all our tasks for the rest of the five weeks, including which cafés we needed to visit, which stakeholder groups we wanted to interview, and how we were going to present our final proposal. We also had a chance to talk to Adrián, the director of Picacho Con Futuro, about our plans and asked him questions regarding Picacho's need and vision for the cultural café.

Since our first deliverable is to establish the narrative and value of Barrio Mío (the café), we visited three cultural café's this past week: Ithaca, Antimateria, and La Pascasia. We will be visiting a fourth one, Casa Loma in Comuna 13, later in August with other partners of Picacho Con Futuro. Visiting other cultural café's really helped us understand what a "cultural café" means within Medellín and gave us a lot of inspiration for what we could do with Barrio Mío. 

Lastly, as the café visits started wrapping up, we began on our second deliverable, which is mapping out Picacho Con Futuro's stakeholders. But, in order to accurately determine what each stakeholder does within Picacho and how they would benefit from Barrio Mío, we decided to directly talk to the social organizations within Picacho. First, we hosted an art activity where kids within Picacho were told to draw what they imagine Barrio Mío would look like. Although the kids were eager to play and draw their own things, we still got valuable information on what they wanted, such as specific juices, and food. Then, we interviewed "Mujeres con Futuro", or Women with a Future, a social organization within Picacho focused on women learning trades and doing art to escape from the grind, and express their feelings. It was lovely sitting within a group of 13 women, and learn about what they would want from this café.

What could've been done differently?

While my wishes last week were more focused on travel in general (language and managing money), this week is more focused on the specific projects. I think there should've been better communication between Picacho/Adrián, makesense and the four of us about the deliverables, namely which cafés to visit, as there was quite a lot of confusion regarding which ones we had to visit or which ones were suggestions. But I don't want to focus on the negatives too much since we still ended up visiting 3 cafés, had a fun time, took great pictures, and got valuable information. 

Additionally, I wish we had done the entire project planning and timeline creation in the first week, instead of doing it this week with makesense, when we only have 6 weeks. This isn't a huge deal, as I'm confident we still have a good amount of time to do everything we want to do. But, had we planned earlier, we would have gotten more stakeholder interviews finished in the second week, so that we could have all the information by week 3, and dedicate all of week 3 to just the café proposal (considering how week 3 is also really only a 3 day work week). Really, it's not a big deal though; it just means we'll have to work a little bit harder.

What did I learn?

Well, in a less serious tone, I learned to wear sunscreen!! I'm usually pretty good about sunscreen but for some reason I forgot to wear it one day, and got burnt... So, note to future self and anyone else reading this: use suncreen! Haha.

Ok, but more seriously, I realized that people around the world are all the same. When I was sitting with the women from Mujeres con Futuro, many of whom were older, I was reminded of the elderly women I spend time with in hospice. While, yes, the women from Mujeres con Futuro were much healthier, speak an entirely different language, and have lived entirely different lives, I recognized the same warmth and kindness in them. Furthermore, although Colombian cuisine is very different from the food I am used to, I find myself feeling deeply comforted by a bowl of potato soup at Postdata because it reminds me of my dad's cooking. Additionally, even though the children in Picacho grew up in a completely different country, they share the same sense of goofiness and joy that my friends and I had when we were younger. It's such a comforting yet obvious realization that yes, at the end of the day, we're all the same, which is why it's so important to be kind to each other.

What did I learn about Leadership?

Early in the week, our makesense cohort did a leadership exercise, where we took pictures of different parts of UPB (a local university in Medellín), to spell out a word related to leadership that resonated with us. I chose the word "communication", which, in the moment, I didn't really have a specific reason for why I chose that word. But, once we came back together to share our spellings, it was incredible to see how all 13 of us had spelled a different word, and how they had all represented us. I realized that I had chose communication on a whim because deep down, it is a huge core value of mine, which I began to see more and more as we started planning tasks. But, even more so, I saw how other people interpreted leadership, such as through humility, hope, precision, etc.. While I focused more on the logistical part of being a leader, others had focused more on the character part. When I reflected on the exercise, it became really clear that being a leader is to be a good communicator, and have hope, be humble, etc.. We all have our different strengths, but it's important to not forget and improve on our weaknesses, and that's why working with a team is so beautiful because I can recognize my weaknesses through others' strengths and improve them.

Adjustments and developments for next week?

As we begin to embark on our third deliverable, the proposal, which is really the bread and butter of this entire LiA, there is a lot more work to do!

1. We hope to finish all of the necessary interviews and print and post our QR code to the google form, so that the people within Picacho Con Futuro, who we didn't get a chance to talk to in person, can still add what they would like from Barrio Mío. 
2. I will begin planning out the activity events held at Barrio Mío, the branding of Barrio Mío, thinking of decor ideas and helping out with creating prototype brochures of Barrio Mío. 

Hopefully, by the end of next week, most of the proposal planning/research will be done, and we'll be putting together the finishing touches/visual presentations to present to Adrián as our first draft during week 4!