This Monday, on the 6th of July, I arrived from London to Mexico City to start my Leadership in Action project with make_sense Americas - working specifically with the charity Genera Territorios. 

Our first few days were spent having an induction, including a tour of the working space that we will be using in the heart of the city, as well as an introduction to where we'll be staying in our coliving and coworking space, in the central heart of Mexico City. We spent some time having icebreaker activities, getting to know one another - as we are a cohort of 15 scholars. It was interesting to meet scholars from all around the world, including from Ireland, France, Hong Kong, and America. 

We spent some time on Tuesday preparing for our first visit from the charities that we have all been allocated. For me and my team, which consists of four people including myself, we researched the charity a bit, including using the Laidlaw Scholars Network to review the previous cohort's content which was posted about the charity, the work they do, and the experiences that they had. This was super helpful upon meeting the charity as it gave us an insight on what we might be discussing during our meeting. It is worth noting that we did have a bit of confusion prior to meeting the charity, about the specifics of the project that we would be getting involved with, however, as soon as we met the charity all became clear and we are now in a better position to move forward with our project that we will be completing here in Mexico City. 

Our meeting with the charity was excellent, and felt very productive. For example, we were able to discuss the specifics of the project, what our outcomes would be (or expected to be), and we left feeling a lot more confident as a group about the tasks that were ahead. Furthermore, having this time with the group of us (4 scholars) was nice as we were able to really get to know one another, as well as getting to know each other's skillsets which is helpful moving forward, especially when it comes to organising tasks and delegating. 

Our project is essentially to help rural women become more financially and economically independent, teaching transferable financial skills that the women would be able to use to help them start to save money and budget the money that they do receive. We learnt a lot about the communities of these women, including the sort of budget that they often work with - which we learnt was about 100USD per month, often to feed a family of 4-6. This information was not only eye-opening, but useful moving forward to help us understand the audience/target group for our project. 

We have started working on our prototype for our project, which will be to design an 8-week curriculum to teach these women daily economic strategies. 

On Thursday, we were also fortunate enough to visit one of the other NGOs within the make_sense organisation, which was very eye-opening, as it is a charity dedicated to waste disposal and plastic recycling. 

I look forward to continuing my project in CDMX, and being able to flourish within such a vibrant and beautiful city!

A guided meditation we had from our charity!

Our Thursday visit to the waste disposal charity.

Thank you so much to make_sense, as well as Keni and Aide for helping us get settled in!