Hello everyone.

In terms of project development, this week has been the greatest success yet. Liam and I burned the midnight oil last weekend converting our flowchart of messages into a working chatbot prototype, which we will share with the Genera Territorios central team later today. We gave our local volunteers their first assignment this week, and both of them were extremely engaged and committed. For previous readers who asked about co-design and preventing their influence from being treated as merely corrective--this is an extremely wise thing to flag, and we are hoping that including them in writing realistic day-to-day stories about implementing the strategies to inspire the women will allow us to include their constructive visions of locally sensitive communication. We will try to include them more in discussions of course structure as well, since their insights in that area would be very helpful and we do not want to assume our pedagogical methods are optimal for the context. But genuinely good progress. You might be thinking game-theoretically that whether I was confident or not, it would be in my interest (for my relationship with my supervisor, the partner org, future employers, etc.) to pretend I was optimistic, so I'm going to have to illustrate my credible commitment some other way. As a microeconomist, I recognize that actions speak louder than words and hence the best solution is to use a costly signal that is less costly for me than it would be for a poser to create a separating equilibrium. In that spirit, I'll let you know that we're using our project budget to purchase the software to run this chatbot for the foreseeable future. We wouldn't do that if we thought we were completely cooked.

--Update post meeting, there are a few technical glitches, it needs to be in Spanish for the final product, and we are working with our volunteers to finish the stories, but our team is very proud and on track to finish. 

Last weekend, I went to the National Museum of Anthropology and got to visit amazing ruins from the Toltec and Aztec periods. I learned a great deal about burial rites (the idea of trials for the dead to make it to the underworld, including their being forced to forfeit their hearts, was fascinating to me, since it bore no relationship to merit in life but rather functioned solely as a natural constraint of the transition), about the sacrifices of the gods which created the fifth age of the sun, and about the role of Toltec mythology and occupied ruins in legitimizing the Aztec empire. I'm excited to go back sometime so I can hopefully see the Maya section. 

This Wednesday, we went to visit Hagamos Composta in Xocotlan, a family-run sustainable composting venture with multiple sites across Latin America. The team were incredibly kind and seeing the volume of compost they handle and their burgeoning outreach strategy was deeply inspiring. Seeing that a truly egalitarian cooperative that is a first-mover in a high-economy-of-scale sector has every chance to secure a stable position even when environmental concern is still emerging and regulations are slow and negligible was deeply inspiring to me from the point of view of economic development and balancing decentralization and anti-monopoly with efficiency and innovation.

I've grown a lot into team leadership this week, planning the coding process closely with Liam, narrating multiple presentations, and especially coordinating our response to stakeholder question time on Friday. Through effective, transparent communication, we took the imperfections of presenting a first prototype using skills we are relatively novice in and emerged with bilateral trust and an action plan. In that regard, I'd say the central leadership values I used this week were Drive, Collaboration, as well as Justice. Justice is an unusual one for me, as a skeptic of justice-centric moralities (read Nancy Hirschmann and you'll get it), but when it came to asserting clearly what expectations were reasonable (both taking accountability and clarifying realism) and ensuring labor was distributed fairly in the team, I was able to grow into it. I'd say we're still very much in the world of Determined for Laidlaw Changemaker values--this situation may be clearer, but it's still a slog.

I've spent lovely time with my friends this week, especially my fellow American Blake. I visited the old city center and got to see the former pyramids to Tlaloc (so much to say about that -c, I'll never do it justice^) and Huitzilopochtli and learn about the Mesoamerican ballgame Tlachtli (which seems, in its role as a proxy for politics, to have been a strong precedent for FIFA. Fortunately no human sacrifices anymore). I finally found a good gluten free pasta restaurant. Most of the company are taking their days off in Puebla State at the moment (I'm excited to see photos), so a few of us went out last night to see the Odyssey film by Christopher Nolan. It was incredible. Yes they took a ton of liberties and cut mercilessly. But I didn't mind at all. I will stay away from spoilers here as much as possible because I recognize it's very new, but I found the film incredible commentary on moral responsibility, gender, and, yes, leadership. I particularly enjoyed the message that leaders must be able to simultaneously accept sunk costs, bear witness to the horrors beyond their control, and choose the path of transparency by accepting the limits of their own paternalistic power. As I navigate this project with its uncertain consequences, pre-existing limitations, and challenges of communication, I am consistently striving to navigate this balance.

Until next time,

Peter Tarson

^But try this if you're curious: https://www.academia.edu/35118474/Derived_Verbs_of_Possession_in_Uto_Aztecan_Reconstructions_and_Paths_of_Change