Feria de Oportunidades

As a business volunteer, my top priorities are teaching the entrepreneurship class and advising any small business that requests my services, as y’all well know. And that may sound all time consuming, but in reality I’m left with a lot of free time to do what I please. In that free time, I’m encouraged to take advantage of any opportunity I can to help improve my community, or undertake any side project. Two months ago, I decided to take advantage of my free time and started my first big side project: una Feria de Oportunidades, or as it’s known in English, a University Fair.

I’ve had this idea in my head for a long time now, after hearing about it from other, older volunteers. Unlike other parts of Nicaragua that are isolated from universities, Villa el Carmen is only a hour way from Managua. While Leon may be considered the “university town” of Nicaragua, Managua far out numbers Leon in the number of universities available, quality of education, and range of possible degrees. Despite the proximity to Managua, and the interest in continuing their interest, most students have no idea about their options and possibilities after graduating. The students my want to college, but just don’t know where to start. So it seemed logical, at least to me, to hold a university fair to show just exactly what is possible for these tikes.

Not counting the organization of spring breaks, beach weeks, and ultimate tournaments with my college companions, I have no “formal” background in event planning so to speak. Let alone in Spanish and in a developing country. More than providing opportunities for my students, this was a formal challenge for me, to see what I was capable of. And well, I can tell you with certainty that I succeeded. This past Friday the 15^th, the Fair went off without any major flaws. The fair looked eerily similar to some university/career fairs that participated back at home. I hesitate to say this, but the whole spectacle looked very American. I was expecting some brochures, posters and banners, but each university spared to expense, and rolled in with computers, flat screens, mini stages, t-shirt giveaways, and the works. Take a look below at some of the photos:

The whole ordeal involved about two months of planning, wheeling and dealing up until the last minute. Initially, I invited 18 or so universities to participate ia email, and sent reminder emails once a week until I got a response. Despite listing “valid” email addresses on their websites, I only received a handful of responses back. So after three weeks of “technical errors” or being ignored, I turned to old calling. For three weeks in a row, every Friday I would go to Managua, to make phone alls to all of these universities (because the peace corps office has free phone alls). For those of you who know me, I’m not the confrontational type, and don’t like being a burden on anyone. So my stomach would wiggle and squirm every time I picked up the phone to make another call. It’s just not something I enjoy doing. But when the receptionist finally answered was when the real mayhem would begin. As it turns out, some universities down here don’t have formal offices of admission, or if they do they use other, more obscure names. I got accustomed to being passed back and forth, put on hold, and hung up on. And when that didn’t work, the only left to do was show up to the campus and do a little investigating. By the time the dust settled, two months later, eight universities agreed to come, and of the eight seven showed up. (The eight couldn’t come due to other obligations as they told me later.) And coordinating the mass transportation of 7 different institutes and over 200 students proved to be no easy feat either, and it felt like everyday I was running to and from the office of the Ministry of Education for approvals, and running around town looking for money to pay for gas. And in the end, I had to dig into my pockets a bit, but well worth it.

The only downside in this project was the lack of community participation and co-planning. Ideally all of my work here should be sustainable, and an on-going, annual university fair is only possible with a community member or committee that can take over the planning process when I’m gone. It seemed that everyone around me liked the idea of the project…but only just enough to give it the ok, and approve of all of my requests. But if you’re gonna tell me that this was a failure as a result of that you’re dead wrong. You can’t tell me that this didn’t benefit a mountain of students to help plan their futures, and hopefully it inspired a counterpart of mine to take a more active role in next years fair.