6 weeks to go! Musing on a model for creative rural business development

This week’s photos are dedicated to that great love of my life –food!   

“Understand the food of a country and you understand the people!”
 

A simple breakfast:  Pretty standard across Central America
Egg, chile sauce, refried beans, plaintain, bread

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Prompted by my own musings last week about effectively “giving something back” I have been thinking a lot about the notion of “Knowmadic Consultancy” and how I might give that idea wings.

I am exploring ways in which I could achieve a win/win/win solution that would deliver management development to senior managers, business development in less developed/rural communities and also provide me with a means of satisfy my desire to tread the less worn paths of Latin America.

I keep thinking back to a couple of Chamber of Commerce managers I met in Peru,  both of these managers were from remote parts of their respective countries (Paraguay and Venezuela) and were lamenting the fact that it was impossible for them to engage their local members in any business development activities, being constrained both by location and economics. Ping!!! Light bulb!!! ~ Knowmadic Consultancy!!!

At the moment I am developing a delivery model based on one weeks consultancy at a very competitive rate, 45% of the usual EU rate, which would not only pay for itself, but also subsidise a further three weeks work within less developed communities.   The “1 + 3 model” is born!  It would in effect mean I spent 1 week delivering a management leadership course in a city (and a hotel) followed by three weeks working with young entrepreneurs in a rural community and hopefully living as part of that community (with a family).  At the moment it is just an idea, I need to test some assumptions. I am also thinking of only offering this from April 2012 thus giving me a target date for mastery of Spanish.  And it gives me a six month settling in period in Guatemala, and the chance to work on some of these ideas whilst working with the charity in Antigua.

I managed to miss the Skype interview with the charity Friday night, I miscalculated the time difference – I forgot to add an hour on for Daylight Saving Time (aka British Summer[?] Time) so logged off and toddled off to bed just as they were calling me!  We try again on Monday!

 Tortillas and Rice  - the Tortilla are made from a blue maize

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I feel that I am on a right track, with the “1 + 3 model” but as many of you know, my blue sky thinking on green field ideas often results in purple prose and little else. But such is the nature of creativity; Edison after all needed the 999 failed experiments before the 1000^th successful one and the (not so) hey-presto light bulb!  Knowmadic Consultancy, is my light bulb; I just need to reverse engineer the idea, and arrive at a pragmatic and functional process to develop it.   

For me the concept of going to more remote communities taking and sharing knowledge in situ, is very exciting, and core to my vagabonding over the next few years.  Especially if as part of that process I can enthuse younger people and start them thinking about creative, innovative and entrepreneurial solutions and then turning those ideas into real development opportunities.

Fiambre ~ an amazing salad with up to 50 ingredients served at the 

graveside parties on the  "Day of the Dead"

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More prosaically, my other pressing task has been working out the pro and cons of a wide choice of travel options to get to and from Guatemala, as I do plan to be back in the UK in August/September 2012 including a “side trip” to India to celebrate Onam in Kerala.

Air travel: I now realise that a less obvious route benefits me by allowing twice as much luggage, enabling me to take a bag full of textbooks and other resources which otherwise might have gone who knows where. So it looks like I shall go with Continental Airlines: Birmingham ~ Newark ~ Houston ~ Guatemala City in a record 19 hours!

I will post the outcome of Monday nights conversation as I hope you will be as excited as am to find out just what and with whom I am going to be doing empowering stuff from Nov 1st.

 Fruit stall in the market, Antigua: Strawberries are available pretty much all year.

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