First Workshop Update

Last Monday was quite the day for my CBR-SURF project. It began with some hectic copying and finalizing of materials for the first workshop (I went to 7 different places to try and rent a projector screen). After getting everything together I had a late lunch with some friends before heading out to set things up at the Abbey Court Human Rights Center. By 6:00pm everyone was there (Instructors, volunteers/consultants and Judith and Rafael from the HRC staff) for a quick meeting and to touch base. It was the first time everyone involved was in one room at the same time. Pretty soon 6:30 came around. It was soon 6:35, then 6:45, 6:50 and still no one had shown up. By 7:00pm it was pretty clear that no one was coming. I wasn't quite sure what to think. I had thought that volunteering with the elementary school summer camp, giving presentations the the ESL classes, talking to parents, and passing out tons of flyers would be enough to get a small group of people to attend the workshop. I thought I had anticipated the challenge of gaining the trust and community presence needed for workshop attendance but what I learned, however, was that I had barely even begun to scratch the surface.

Thankfully, there was also a positive side to the experience. As I mentioned earlier in the post, Rafael, the Associate Director of the HRC was at the workshop (as he had been out of the country for most of the summer we hadn't met when I began working with the HRC earlier in the summer). Before we even had a chance to let the disappointment set in, he jumped in with massive amounts of helpful suggestions and ideas on how to move forward with the project. He began by talking about all of the programs the center had begun a little over a year ago. With all of them, he said, it took three or four tries before they began to build any kind of attendance. He also spoke to the difficulties of garnering support and interest in new projects. As a largely immigrant community, the members of Abbey Court were used to scams and false promises and thus would be very skeptical of a kid passing out flyers talking about "Self Employment" and "creating your own business." What was really great about the conversation with Rafael, however, was that in addition to identifying the problem, he also helped us address it. As a graduate student in sociology at UNC, Rafael has spent the past two years researching the day laborers of Carrboro as well as getting to know many members of the Abbey Court community. Because of this he has gained the trust of the community on a much deeper level than I ever would be able to achieve in a single summer and during the meeting he agreed to help me promote the workshop those that he knows in the community.

Even though they are not what I had anticipated, the next steps are fairly clear. If I want to even think about offering and refining these small business workshops, I need to take a few steps back and really invest myself in the Abbey Court community. The process started this morning with Rafael introducing the project to a couple of his friends at the BP Station and it will continue one conversation and one hand shake at a time.

Last minute preparations

It's Sunday afternoon and our first scheduled workshop is tomorrow! I've spent the past week finalizing all of the translations for the workshop handout as well as having our facilitator (Claudia Viveros) and my advisor (Darcy Lear) go through the material to catch mistakes, improve the phrasing, etc... It's been quite a bit of work to get this together but it's great to finally have a tangible product! In addition to Claudia and Darcy, I also want to take time to thank the translators for this first workshop: Maggie West, Linda Chamiec-Chase, and Lily Smith. All of these people have been amazing and without them none of this project would be possible.

In addition to finalizing the workshop material, I also spent the last week doing a lot of advertising. This included talking to participants the ESL and computer classes that occur at the HRC as well as passing out flyers to the parents of the children who hang out in the center during the afternoon. Here's what the flyer looks like:



Hopefully our efforts are successful and we'll have a decent turn out tomorrow. I'll try to post a quick update tomorrow night to let y'all know how it goes.

Thanks,

Ben

First Workshop July 19th!

It's been about two weeks since my last entry so there are quite a lot of things to write about.

As I mentioned in the last entry, I have really been forced to take a hard look at my project and ensure that it is both do-able and research focussed. Having begun to figure things out over the past few weeks the curriculum and logistics of the workshops have begun to fall into place. Entering the summer, I really had two goals for my project: one was to continue to explore the idea of whether or not a series of small business workshops increased success (loan repayment, business longevity) of a micro-enterprise loan, the other was to research how the plethora of existing small business workshop material in english needs to be adapted to be relevant to the Latino community. What I've realized is that for the summer at least, the second question is the most feasible one to focus on. The first question is more long-term and would really require a tested and solidified workshop curriculum in order to be answered.

With this in mind, the small business workshops this summer are primarily designed around piloting the trainings we have developed while obtaining as much feedback as possible so we can hopefully turn the pilot into something that is useful and relevant to the Chapel Hill Latino community.

Right now, we have two workshops ready to pilot. The first focuses on "Defining your Business" and provides several examples of successful micro-enterprises to help participants find and develop business ideas. With a general idea of your desired business developed in the first workshop, the second workshop talks about the importance of understanding your business' customers and competition. As mentioned earlier, this material will also be accompanied by a system to try and gain valuable feedback as well as test the usefulness of the workshops. This will include several questions before the beginning of the first workshop, designated space in each workshop handout for comments/suggestions/criticisms, and a focus group after the second workshop. If all goes well and it seems manageable, we will continue with the remaining workshops on Marketing, Pricing, and Legal issues.

Along with a solidification of the workshop model, we have also set the date for the first workshop! The training on "Defining your Business" is going to be on Monday, July 19th from 6:30-8:30 in the Abbey Court Human Rights Center. We've been doing outreach at the center's various programs over the past week so hopefully we will have to 7 or so participants we've been looking for.

This next week looks to be a pretty busy one for the project so I'm sure I'll have to plenty to say next Sunday.

Thanks for reading!

-Ben