Week 5:

This week was extremely hectic and the beginning of our projects coming to fruition. Stress levels were high! Nonetheless, it was very fulfilling week to be able to see our projects unfold and come to life. 

Focus Group

The week began with finalising details for our focus group. I ensured that we had all our resources ready for our focus group, which took place on 8th of August at Huerto Roma Verde. It was a little bit stressful because the majority of the volunteers arrived late which meant that we had to re-structure the session as Rodrigo and Pancho, the people we worked with, needed to leave at a certain time. The focus group taught me the importance of being flexible and adapting quickly to solve any problem that is presented in my way. Next time, we need to be strict with the participants and give them clear expectations regarding timing so that we can start promptly if we were to hold a similar session in the future.

Despite the focus group not being advertised the best due to lack of time, we ended up with 6 participants, which made for an interesting and insightful discussion. I had to show leadership by leading Rodrigo and Pancho, as well as the participants, through the focus group and by making the space a friendly and welcoming one for people to be able to voice out their opinions. 

I was supposed to begin the focus group with an icebreaker; due to time constraints, I had to go straight into the session. Even though I had prepared everything in advance minute by minute, I used my plan as a guide instead and altered the session to allow the group to be able to discuss the issues of waste management at hand better. 

This session enabled us to extract information regarding why the participants think that people do not separate their waste, use Nidaria's services or waste food. The main consensus amongst the participants was the lack of care people have for separating their waste and for the environment as well as the futility of the government when it comes with implementing policies to aid people with waste management. 

Despite the focus group beginning later than we expected and us not being able to follow the flow and structure of the session to the tee, it went extremely well as the participants were well engaged with the topic at hand, giving us well-reasoned arguments.

Survey + Research + Flyer Design

Following the focus group, we also began allocating tasks to volunteers. 2 volunteers were tasked with making flyers to distribute to guests at the impact carnival, 4 volunteers helped us with researching other cities' waste management and every volunteer was assigned to get as many survey responses as possible. 

We divided the tasks to different volunteers by creating separate WhatsApp groups and explaining to them in detail what they need to do and what is expected from them. 

I also began the census by going around the city and asking people to complete the survey. It was a more difficult task to complete as my Spanish is very limited; with the help of our volunteers, we managed to get around 100 survey responses. 

Impact Carnival

Deciding what to do and whether to attend the Impact Carnival was a point of debate between me and Cyrus as we were unsure whether we had time to do it nor did we know what to do. 

However, we had 4 volunteers willing to come so we were determined to make it work. We ideated and bounced ideas off each other and decided to do a powerpoint, a quiz and end with compositing bingo. 

The carnival did not go to plan although. We thought that we would have a room where people would come in and listen to our workshop. In reality, we had a stall in a room of other stalls so our original plan could not work. Instead of retreating and pulling out of the carnival last minute, we had to think quickly on our feet to solve our problem. Instead, we, along with our volunteers, asked people in Huerto Roma Verde to complete the survey and we focused our efforts on the composting bingo. We asked Rodrigo to speak to the crowd regarding Nidaria and what they do. We found that bingo was a great way to hook people in and gather as many people as possible in one space where they can listen to Rodrigo about what Nidaria does to try to make it more informative. Also, we showed a video of how Nidaria converts food waste into animal feed. The bingo ended up being very successful. Everyone was extremely engaged and it was just an overall fun time. It was also a way to teach people about composting and the value of food waste. 

Next time, we could definitely find a better way to make an interactive game, like Bingo, be more informative to better benefit our organisation. If we had known that we would only have a stall, we could have better planned for the event as well. Nonetheless, I think that we made the best out of the situation and quickly adapted to what was asked of us. 

I am extremely proud of me and Cyrus for pulling these events off and transforming our mission to have more depth so that we can help Nidaria better. Cyrus also translated Nidaria's website to English alongside all of these events. Instead of just conducting research and the survey, we went above and beyond and also did a focus group and participated in the Impact Carnival. I hope that our efforts mean that people are now more aware about Nidaria and people in La Roma are more informed about the importance of separating waste and the value in food waste, which can in fact, be turned into animal feed.