January 2009

In January, our chapter’s executive team (Ashley, Trevor, and Brendan) conducted the week-long Brigade Assessment Trip. After being stranded overnight in the Miami airport due to weather in Chicago (surprise, surprise!), we arrived at the Panama City airport, where we were greeted by Adriana Piñero, the GBB Panama Director. No time was wasted as we immediately headed east toward the jungle terrain of Panama, where we would be meeting up with a group of students from University of Texas to be introduced to their school’s project.

We lodged in tree house-like cabanas at the remarkable jungle abode of Nathan Gray, founder and CEO of Earth Train, a nonprofit focused on rainforest preservation and restoration. UT Austin worked with Earth Train to adopt a microenterprise project in El Valle de Madroño, a village of farmers, with the goal of setting up a sustainable business that would allow the women of the community to grow decorative plants in their gardens and have them transported to Panama City, where they would be sold in a gallery. We spent the first half of our trip teaming with Texas on their project, working with the women in El Valle and training them on basic accounting principles and on product improvement.

The latter part of our trip was spent in a hostel in Casco Viejo, the beautiful and historic area of Panama City. We picked up our Business Advisor, Sid Jansma, from the airport on Wednesday, and he joined us for our project assessment. Our four-person Calvin team and the GBB in-country advisors worked with a local NGO, Patronato de Nutrición, to identify a microenterprise project for our school. The project that we have decided to adopt is a subsistence farm called “Granja de las Gaitas.” We were greeted by the entire community and were offered tours of the farm with its breathtaking view of a mountainous landscape as well as tastes of the delicious piñas (“pineapples”) and naranjas (“oranges”) grown on the farm. With the support of Patronato de Nutrición, this farm helps provide for the food needs and supplemental income of 14 families. With the help of farm community leaders, our GBB team was able to brainstorm and identify an opportunity to help this farm community enter the rapidly growing market of “agro-tourism.” With its scenic location and convenient highway accessibility, Granja de las Gaitas is already a perfect candidate for becoming a tourist stop that travelers might like to visit to learn about the Panamanian countryside and about the farming lifestyle.

Upon returning to Grand Rapids, our Calvin team will be recruiting student volunteers and field professionals to work on the project. The work of our project will also involve a great deal of fundraising in order to fund multiple trips and to ensure that we have sufficient micro-finance capital to invest in our adopted development project. Our project’s culmination will be a series of trips abroad, in which we will conduct our “business brigade” by implementing and further assessing our sustainable business model for the agro-tourism business. We will be working hand-in-hand with leaders in the farming community to help these small business owners gain the skills and knowledge to develop their farm into an appealing tourist stop.

To make this project a success, we need help from family and friends in the following three ways:

1) As a sponsor champion (any amount) to help us pay for subsequent trips in May and to perpetuate sustainable economic solutions in our village. If you might be interested in supporting us financially, please visit the GBB fundraising website.

2) As a student who will join us on the brigade (especially those who are Spanish-speaking).

3) As a supporter in thought and prayer as we embark on our brigade trips.

Thank you for your support! We hope our excitement for this project is apparent and that you might enjoy receiving future updates from us about our brigade.