Learn by doing sustainable livelihood
Today we're circling back to the subject of sustainable development. We're now approaching the halfway point in the first year of the pilot project that officially began in March, and we're thrilled with the emerging results.
When we were gifted funding for a sustainable livelihood project, the criteria that we used to select the two pilot projects was the generation of at least a small income. There are plenty of pedagogical and synaptic reasons for this decision, but it's also intuitively logical.
We tend to learn faster when there's a previously existing combination of motivation and experimentation. The lessons are more relevant, the questions are sharper, and there's greater committed engagement.
Darwin (Sustainable Livelihood Project Coordinator) says it's been a joy to witness the transformation of leaders who entered the program with relatively low expectations based on the small financial return from their honey production and alternative tourism projects.
They're now excited about the prospect of generating discretionary income for their organizations through thoughtful applications of their lessons on attention to clients, branding, and marketing.
It's important to point out that these community leaders are learning to be administrators of organizations while they become experts in the programatic areas of their respective organizations. Adding on-the-job entrepreneurial training besides everything else they must accomplish every day is a perfect example of the professional commitment that defines visionary leaders.
The attitude of eager willingness to "learn and do whatever it takes" (to help their community) marks the difference between visionary leaders and people who do their job just to earn a salary.
Finally, I can't resist the temptation to share an apparently small but potentially significant benefit that resulted from the solicitation for government-sponsored workshops that were offered by the agencies of Tourism and Economic Development.
Deborah, Director of Operations and Programs, put on her Pedagogical Hat when reviewing the government agencies' plan for the workshops. She suggested that Darwin request that the classes shift from purely theoretical to a combination of practice and theory.
The initial response from the governmental professionals was predictably unenthusiastic --- but no doubt out of respect for his characteristic diplomacy and tact, with deep sighs and rolling eyes, they complied.
Afterward, all the workshop leaders expressed genuine gratitude for the suggestion. Apparently, the enthusiastic, interactive engagement of the participants was significantly more and better than the responses they'd gotten at their previous (theory-only) events.
So hopefully, those professionals will continue to experiment with balancing combinations of practice and theory as they continue to offer workshops in areas with low levels of formal education.
