Trabajo en Equipo

About two weeks ago (sorry I'm so late in posting about this), we went out with all of the staff here in the office to carry out more questionnaires in Campanero, the first community that is being surveyed as part of the ongoing evaluation project. Volunteers had already started surveying in Campanero a couple days before, and we interns accompanied them; then we went with the staff so that all the staff could become acquainted with the questionnaire and know what's going on with this ongoing evaluation.

Campanero is a rather small community outside of Santa Cruz, a couple minutes past a larger community called Cotoca. Apparently, most of the people in Campanero work in the brick and roof tile factory there. There is one paved street and one taxi line that connects the community to Santa Cruz.

The day before we went out we had a meeting with the staff to train them on administering the questionnaire and to be able to read through the entire questionnaire. The training went well, though it was fairly long. The staff had a lot of good questions and clarifications, which was great. The weeks before we had spent quite a bit of time adapting the questionnaire to focus on indicators both of Ascend's impact on the lives of these families and of demographic aspects that might guide Ascend's future involvement in the given community. Campanero, where it was decided we would start, is actually a community Ascend is not currently working in, so the data from there will mostly serve to give some idea of the situation of the families after Ascend's involvement.

The day we went out to Campanero was actually freezing cold. A very chilly cold front had just happened to come in that week, sadly. But even though we all had to bundle up quite a bit, the staff was committed and we all went out to survey. Here's some live shots of surveying in Campanero:

Jhon surveying a woman outside her house.
Doug and Jefe (Luis) showing that surveying can really be the funnest thing ever.

Don Nano surveying a woman with Jhon's supervision.

Kendal surveying a mother (or is it the child?) while the mother doesn't lose time from her sewing.

After we were all sufficiently frozen, we warmed ourselves up with plenty of meat from Brasargents (a Brazilian grill), back in Santa Cruz. This was a great reward for the deserving work the whole staff put into surveying in the morning. Here's a few pictures from lunch: