We've moved!

Thanks to the very talented designer Grace Salem, we now have a new website with a whole new identity and a blog within a robust website. So please bookmark that site, www.thenewschoolcollaborates.com since we will no longer be using this blogger site. Of course, all of the previous blog posts are still searchable there.

Thank you for following our work in Guatemala! We have returned in summer 2010 with a team of 7 students and 1 faculty, so please stay tuned via our new blog.

Day 1 - A Total Immersion

Today's day started with a typical breakfast (more on that later),


a stop to purchase a couple of inexpensive cellphones (the two major companies are Claro and Tigo) for our students,


and then a public bus ride from Antigua to San Antonio.

In a very nice first meeting with most of the students (one arrived later, in the afternoon) for this first part of our project, led to some great ideas, goals, priorities, and values that we set for ourselves. Some of the things that came up include cultural preservation, cultural tourism, capacity building, community inclusion, urban development, and mapping and networks. I was quite moved with the students' sensibilities which were guiding their desire to not "set the agenda" until we had actually met with our community partners.


After a yummy Guatemalan-style lunch we


waited to meet with the Mayor of the Municipality of San Antonio de Aguas Calientes (which includes the urban center of San Antonio and the small villages of Santiago Zamora and San Andres Ceballos.

The meeting with the mayor was definitely an eye-opening experience for anyone who has not been exposed to Latin American politics. Definitely more on that later, but the big take-away question for me is - how can local governments gain popularity via short-term solutions to big problems, but still pave a path for a sustainable long-term goal for poverty alleviation and the wellbeing of the citizens? A huge question, for which I can only hope that the work we do this summer will maybe help to answer (or even participate in the answering of) this development dilemma.

Our work day ended with a meeting with Veronica, the coordinator of the Women's Project for the municipality, and the person who oversees the project/work with which we will be connecting. There's currently not much structure to the program on the government side of things except that it seems that San Antonio is joining in on a Guatemalan trend of "community tourism" in which they are exploring this notion of preparing towns to "give" to tourists more than just a piece of cloth to buy, but a true local experience (making tortillas, grinding coffee beans, and learning how to weave were some of what they mentioned.)



What are you looking for when you book a trip? What would really make you want to come to San Antonio?

Back in Guatemala - faculty & students

We are happy to be back in Guatemala. This year we are doing things a bit differently. First, we are excited to be working with a new group of artisan women. We are partnering with the municipality of the town of San Antonio de Aguas Calientes and starting off by understanding their goals, the goals of the artisan women, and after a needs assessment, figure out how we want to best work together. The first group of students who are here have prepared workshops in leadership, group work, English, computers, and photography. Stay tuned to see what we end up working on!

In two weeks we will return to San Lucas Toliman to continue the work we have been doing with Ajkem'a Loy'a. This summer we have a specific goal of producing five finished products to bring back to New York for further market research (or even to present to retailers for orders.) We also want to be diligent about evaluating our work thus far, and deciding on a mid to future term long plan.

If this is the first time hearing about our work, please read this paper which serves as a trip report from last year, and outlines how this all started.

Thank you for reading, and we promise many more images and video entries in days to come!