Wandering Shepard: Cloudy with a Chance of Entrepreneurship

I know, it’s a terrible title right? I had the book “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” on my mind, and I figured I could borrow the general theme of the title. But it does have some relevance for what is to come. So after being pushed back a week, and a well needed week of preparation at that, the big Feria de Emprendedurismo (Entrepreneurship Fair) was today, the dia de hoy. This is the culmination of a years worth of work within the Nica school system, and reflects largely on the work that Casey, Nicole, and I have done with our respective counterparts and kids. So understandably, I could barely sleep last night, just thinking about all the possible things that could go wrong. And believe you-me, a lot of things could go wrong in any sort of Nica get together.

To provide a little more background for those who forget, I have been working the high schools of my municipality teaching an entrepreneurship class to the senior class. These students formed groups and chose a product at the beginning of the school year, and since then have been slowly developing their business plans, in preparation for today, the big competition. That is the theory at least. Every class is a new part of the business plan (a very basic business plan), and the teams are encouraged to save their work over the course of the year, so that come competition time, their business plans only require a little bit of revision. But c’mon, who’s going to expect any high school senior to do that? So of course these past couples of weeks have involved me running around the entire municipality, helping to revise business plans, and in some instances starting from scratch. It’s important to note too, that I took over the classes of the previous volunteers, the above mentioned Casey and Nicole, who I give the majority of the credit for the success of so many of the teams here. They were the ones who really got the ball rolling, and I jumped in at the end to teach the no-fun technical stuff, and help organize.

Now to even get to the municipal competition, teams had to win smaller, local competitions within their schools. Due to the sheer number of schools, and therefore teams, you had to qualify for the Big One. Which meant that the best of the best from each school was present today, at our municipal competition, which took place right across the street from my house, in the heart of Villa El Carmen.

Now back to the title of this post, and while its relevant. For the first time in probably two weeks, it just stopped raining. It was still cloudy, hence the title, but no rain despite rain all last night. And no rain meant a 100% chance of entrepreneurship on the radar screen. Alright, I’ll stop with the bad weather jokes. But the weather was just one of my many worries. Will dirt roads be dry enough to drive on? Will all the judges show up? Will anybody show up? Do I have an audio system confirmed? Are the kids as excited as I am? Do horse shoes have horse socks? Is anybody listening to me? These were just a few of the worries flying through my head, and it turns out some were justified. One judge called in sick, and my original audio system never showed. But expecting such problems, there were backups for both of those problems. We activated Plan B, and continued on without a hitch.

Each group set up a stand to sell and present their product, and the judges and the general public had an opportunity to walk around and take a look at each group. A fair of sorts. After the fair, each group walked up to the stage, and gave a 10 minute presentation about their product to four judges, explaining themes such as the results of their Market Study, margin of earning and break-even point, and SWOT analysis. The groups were graded on Creativity, Business Plan, Presentation, Marketing, and Finances. An important distinction of this competition, and the class as a whole, is that the emphasis is on learning and creativity, not on the “success” of the business. On paper your business could be losing money, but what is important is that the group knows why they are losing money, and know how to use the tools to tell them if they’re earning or losing money. It’s no secret that one of the biggest problems here in Nicaragua is poverty, despite the rich resources of this nation. It’s not that the people aren’t creative, it’s that its not really encouraged to, let’s say, go against the grain. The end goal of this class is to foster that creativity in the kids, and to give them a skill set for life after high school since a small percentage continue their education. Because the job market is so small right now, it’s more important that these kids create their own employment, and in turn generate more employment for their community by creating their own small business.

Every presentation went better that I could have expected, and I couldn’t have been happier with every group. I had this image in my head of how I wanted the day to go, and incredibly that’s how it turned out. But in true Nica fashion, an hour and a half late. But so is life down here. Below I included every picture of each team, how they finished in the competition, and a description of their product. I hope you enjoy the photos!