Long weekend in Santa Marta

The coastal town (on the Atlantic Ocean) of Santa Marta is apparently where the famous "liberator" Simon Bolivar died. I am here during a long weekend in between project meetings in Cartagena. It is a four hour bus ride between the two cities.

The small beach in the downtown is nothing too special and I think it is mostly used by local people. The tourists seem to go to the bigger beaches north and south of the city. I always like the beaches used by local people. Lots of atmosphere:

To the left of the beach is a nice marina, a permanent crafts market and a few big new buildings with apartments under construction. I hope they will also invest in renovations of the old downtown which has a nice character but is in need of some serious work. To the right you see an important harbour:

This was one of the first places in Colombia the Spaniards landed centuries ago, and till today the maritime business is an important sector of the local economy.

Walking around I watched for a while the taping of a documentary. Interesting to see how many "takes" it takes to get a small segment right. I also loved watching a bunch of old guys discussing whatever it was they were discussing.....

All together a few nice relaxing days here in Santa Marta. Happy Canada Day to all the Canadians!

Gender mainstreaming

In all the projects and programs CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency) finances, we work on gender "mainstreaming". That means that we always try to promote and when possible create equal opportunities and access for women (of all ages) for economic development. In our project between ACCC (Association of Canadian Community Colleges) and SENA (Colombian National Training Agency) this means that we try to stimulate access to training and professional training for both women and men. We "mainstream" it in all our activities.

Today I attended a session for industry representatives at the SENA Training Center for programs for the petro-chemical industry in Cartagena, in the north of Colombia (Cartagena is the capital city of the province of Bolivar, where we concentrate our ACCC-SENA program).

The session was to explain the options the new "applied research" laboratory of this SENA campus offers for their industry partners. The Manager of this laboratory is an expert in chemistry and a female professional (she is the one presenting in the photo above). Her Manager is also a chemical engineer and among the students starting to do applied research in this laboratory the balance is almost a perfect 50-50 %. SENA is already leading the way in gender mainstreaming in this field and maybe some of our Canadian colleges can learn some lessons here... :-)

I took these photos at the beginning of the session and afterwards some more industry representatives arrived. I counted at a later moment 9 visitors of whom 6 were female and 3 were male professionals. A few of them were HR Managers of local companies and others were Managers of Quality Control departments. They were all very enthusiastic about this new applied research facility, because so far they were sending some of their staff to the US and Europe for training on the displayed equipment.

The state-of-the-art testing equipment will be very beneficial to control the quality and safety processes of the local petro-chemical industry in Cartagena and Barranquilla. SENA Bolivar has also already signed a partnership agreement with one of the local Universities to have their students and staff use the laboratory for some more advanced primary research projects.

The balance of female and male professionals in this field and sector can only result in a safer and hopefully cleaner industry. That is the end-game of gender mainstreaming. Not only to make sure that we do a better job integrating both men and women in our economic life, but also to make that the industry becomes a better corporate citizen. Gender mainstreaming will the only hope to get there....

For the south of the Bolivar province - where we hope to implement our ACCC-SENA partnership programs for the small scale gold mining sector - the progress on gender mainstreaming will take a bit more time, because it is such an informal sector there. But SENA already understands the need and principles of gender mainstreaming well. A good start... !

I will leave you today with a beautiful sunset in Cartagena over the Atlantic Ocean....

Halfway the year in Bogota

Going towards the end of June I have already been here in Bogota for almost half a year. While battling a bit of a flu this week, I had to get outside today and enjoy the nice weather. This photo is a view of the street I live on since April; up the hill, I will take you there in a moment...

To the left of where I took the first photo is the grocery store I mostly use, one of the many "Garulla" outlets. It has literally everything you could be looking for. I don't go out that much, but when I get together with some people and/or when I want to watch a good soccer game in a fun environment, I go to the "Bogota Beer Factory" pub, also just around the corner of where I live:

Just a block further is the street I mostly walk down on my way to the SENA offices or to the closest shopping mall. On the sign you can maybe read that just down the hill it crosses the "septima", the "Carrrera 7" which runs all the way from the south (the old city center) to the north, where most of the newer suburbs are built.

Turning around from that same point you get a view of the street up towards the hills. That way I do regularly a walk in a small park. Let me take you there:

This little park has a stream coming down from the hills and it really right away takes you out of the big city atmosphere. I like to do this walk during mornings when I work from my apartment and on nice days during the weekend. A few snapshots of the park:

This is a photo at the top of the park when it crosses the Carrera 1 (or "circunvular"). At this road that also runs from north to south they have built apartment buildings which have a very nice view over the city of Bogota. Here a few impressions:

I made this (not so pretty) photo to show you the street signage. It is all a grid and quite easy to find your way in town. All the roads going from north (with the newer parts of the city) to south (where the old town center is and beyond) are called "Carreras" and number 1 is up on the hill (where I am standing while taking this photo) to number 100 something near the airport. All the streets going from the east (up the hill on Carrera 1) to the west (where the airport is) are called "Calles" and they go from number 1 in the old city center to number 200 or so in the newer areas of the city in the north.

After going up, there is always again the going down. A view of the walk down....

This is the last part of my street up the hill. Behind the steep grass hill is my apartment building. I walk this up every day 2 or 3 times, and it is a great daily work-out... :-)

The entrance of the building. It is on Calle 72 close to the Carrera 1. The SENA buildings are at Calle 57 and that is a good 20 minute walk. The Canadian Embassy is at Calle 115 and that would be about an hour walk. The Embassy is right across from Usaquen where they have the Sunday craft markets of which I made a post in January. Here is a look of my apartment:

And my little home office. This is where I spent most of my time plotting & planning the project work. With the help of e-mail and Skype it is really a nice way to communicate across the country and with the colleagues in Ottawa. I do go almost every day to the SENA offices, but more to attend meetings, to catch up with people and to join them for lunches.

The work of project start-up goes slow. Too slow for an impatient person like me. But it takes time to get everybody to agree with a Project Implementation Plan which at the end of five years is the basis on which the project results will be measured against. The coming month will be the final part of that planning and later in August and the months of September, October and November we will see again a lot more concrete action. I will try to keep you updated with ongoing posts.

Being away from home now for almost six months brings me to a few early conclusions. It is a very different experience than when I did this in my early thirties as a single professional. I miss Mary, Hilary and Mark much more than I had expected. For that reason alone, I would not do again a year away like this. The travelling work will hopefully always be part of my life, but ideally that is done from the home-base in Niagara....

The work experience is fantastic and of course one learns so much more from a country and its cultures when you live there for a longer time than the 1, 2 or 3 week visits. I have met already a lot of fascinating and intriguing Colombians through both work and social activities. I will do my best to share as much with you as I can of those people and their realities as I can through this blog.

Right now I have to get rid of this typical "Bogota gripa"(flu) through lots of sleep, vitamins and what they consider here the magic solution: "canella con limon". All the best & be good!

Skateboarders in Bogota

While some of you maybe witnessed today some horrible floods in Alberta, Canada or in various places in Europe, and others watched street-protests in Brasil or Turkey, or yet others just had a quiet Friday anywhere in the world, I walked back from meetings at the SENA offices and saw the "septima" (Carrera 7 going from south to north of the city) full of hundreds of skateboarders of all ages. Not sure if it was a protest or just a fun get together. Also here in Bogota one can see a variety of skateboard parks, so maybe they wanted to get a few more. The only sign I could find in the park where they seemed to end their "march" was one declaring June 21 a "feliz dia del skate"....

Most of them just hang around in the park in groups, maybe resting from the possibly long way they had skateboarded over the "septima" to get here. Some others had energy to "show off":

Whatever it was, it all looked very peaceful and mellow. The kids could have been from New York, Berlin, Singapore or Sydney. They all  have a few things in their outfit to make them being "part" of the worldwide skateboard enthusiasts such as those typical "rapper baseball caps"... :-)

This group asked me to make a photo of them, so I quickly snapped one with my own phone as well. They must have been fans of those Disney movies... ? I didn't ask; not enough of a journalist in me..

I caught a nasty cold this week... the weather in Bogota changes so much even within one day. And it can be 20-22 degrees Celcius during the day (and warmer in the sun) and then at night it goes down to 7-8 degrees. How do you dress for that? I am going to take what they all advise me: a hot canella with lemon drink, sweat it out in bed, sleep a lot this weekend and then we'll see....

Next week more meetings here in Bogota and then off to Cartagena for planning meetings with the SENA team there. Sneaking in a few days in Santa Marta during a long weekend there. So probably my next blog post will show you some pics from there. In the meantime... be good

Colombians attending annual conference of ACCC

From May 29 to June 7 we invited two of our SENA colleagues to Canada, Bibiana Pinto who is the campus manager of a training center in Cartagena + Juan Guillermo Carvajal who is the campus manager of a training center in Puerto Berrio. Both are leaders in our EFE program design between SENA and ACCC (Association of Canadian Community Colleges).

The conference was this year hosted by Okanagen College at their campus in Penticton, British Columbia. We all arrived on Friday May 30 together with EFE program representatives from Peru and Bolivia, as well as from Senegal, Mozambique, Tanzania and a few of the Caribbean countries.

On Saturday June 1 the international programs team of ACCC hosted a meeting between all their international guests and representatives of international education offices of member colleges. Presentations were given on new programs in Brasil, China, India and Bangladesh. All participants were encouraged to network and exchange experiences.

In addition to the smaller group session we attended a variety of plenary presentations and discussions from Canadian experts in education, journalists and government leaders.

On Monday June 3 we had a meeting on the EFE Andes with all the international visitors and the entire ACCC team. Plans were discussed for the program activities of the coming year and common topics, challenges and opportunities were brought to the table.

Presenting the EFE Andes program at the conference

Bibiana and Juan Guillermo gave an excellent presentation about our EFE program in Colombia on Sunday June 2. They showed a recently produced video of the small scale mining communities where we will focus our work of the EFE program the coming three years.

The EFE Peru delegation followed with an equally good presentation. They will do work in three provinces in the country where they will focus on the entire value added chain of operations in agri-business, also mostly with small scale and subsistence farmers.

Our Bolivian colleagues followed with an interesting presentation on the college system in their country which will need a complete "face-lift". The EFE program in Bolivia will have several focus areas among them also agriculture.

Before and after the presentations good networking between our international visitors and Canadian college representatives took place.