Sunday, January 30, 2011
Bulleted like a train...the Amos Train
::January 20, 2011::
As the days begin to get more cram packed, we'll resort to bulleted imagery and hope for elaboration to fill the spaces between...
- Prisma visits
- Solar Explanation & Pictures
- Visit - Danli
- "Espunillas" maker
- "Corn lady" - Rosquillas, Tostaquas...Cafe, frijoles in other seasons
- Bloque maker
- Santa Cruz de Paraiso
- Presentation of TEGU.com toy
- Valle de Zamarano
- Roadway entering Tegucigalpa
- burning, smoldering trash
- housing, encampments, trails in and out of th valley sides
- steep inclines and declines to hillside structures
- brief glimpeses down alleys and walk ways, through communities and down into valley space
Inside Tegu.com
::January 18, 2011::
Tegu Visit
We took a 45 minute trip outside of Tegucigalpa to visit a "For-profit" toy company named Tegu. It is a relatively new company built on a fairly simple product: wooden, shaped blocks with magnets embedded into them. Chris, a Stanford alumni and former consultant with Boston Consulting Group, met us at the production facility and gave us an explanation and tour of the operation, along with his perspective on the current business environment in Honduras and some of the future plans for Tegu. Tegu had its first, full scale and "successful" holiday season this past Christmas, and it has grown from a starting employee base of 12 to the current 80. Its current product line offers sets of 26 and 52 block pieces with several color schemes. Originally, they started with natural wood finishes, but they incorporated the colored blocks for the past holiday season. Chris and his brother partner to run the company, which has been incorporated in both the US (2007) and Honduras (2009). In his description of the benefits and challenges of operating in Honduras, he explained that though they started the process of incorporation at the same time in both countries, the process in Honduras took several months as opposed to the single day in the US. Additionally, he explained that there were several benefits for operating out of Honduras, such as not having to pay taxes, but it took over a year for Tegu to get the proper permitting to access those benefits.
Recruiting is performed via strong recommendations and referral. They conduct basic math and writing skills along with a magnet test where they give employees a set of the magnets that they use in the toys to see how they adjust to using it (because many people have not dealt with such magnets). The last part is done to evaluate the employee's ability to adapt and figure things out. They want people who are willing to ask questions on how to do it right, rather than allowing things to continue if they are not correct. To date, they've fired 4 people (out of their current 80) becuase they really are trying to maintain a team environment where people work with each other. They pay a competitive wage and provide transportation to their employees (he said that maybe 5 or 6 have cars or motorcycles). Their employees work 4 days, 11 hours a day, in two rotations, which amount to 4 days on, 4 days off. Tegu has identified several candidates within their employee pool that they are considering sponsoring to take either night classes or send them to university. Tegu has hired on upper-management personel from a neighboring apparel factory and a fish hook factory that had recently gone out of business. They effectively have absorbed that talent to strategically bolster their own
workforce. Currently, Tegu pays into the Honduras social security system, which, in Honduras (as opposed to the US), allows the employees access to the nations health care system. Chris explained that the national health care system is not good and that they are looking into providing a private health care solution to its employees. Their overall hope when bringing people on, is to keep them and not treat them like commodities (like other companies might). They are looking into streamlining processes like painting and magnet installation, but he emphasized that, in doing so, the employees would be reallocated to more value-adding activities and not be cut necessarily.
Tegu's initial round of funding has come from friends and family, and, in some cases, mutual friends and/or referrals. Chris' brother runs the marketing and stateside operations, while he operates production on the Honduras side. Though they do work with local wood suppliers, the lag time with material delivery (which can be delayed as long as a month) means that Tegu imports wood from the US to keep the supply chain moving smoothly. They are working with local wood cutters to improve their process. However, he didn't go into much detail as to how they were doing this. He mentioned that future product lines might start to include other components like wheels and other moving parts. He explained the magenets that they used were the strongest magnets in the world and were sourced from China.
Val's take on Moringa
::January 17, 2011::
Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, but nobody in Honduras cares. We had beautiful sunny weather for the 20-70 minute ---20min according to Ricardo, 70 min by some estimates... the actual time is still unknown, but at this point I'm pretty sure Honduran minutes do not equal U.S.A. minutes--- ride out to Zamarano. First we met up with an American gentleman named Tom Currin, who married a strong-willed Honduran woman many years ago and moved to Honduras three years ago. The plan to show us his moringa tree (known as the "miracle tree" and widely used for its health benefits in India as Greeshma elaborated) plantation was almost foiled by hungry cows. But we went out to the fields to see the trees anyway. A few of our group ate the seeds from one of the few pods that the cows left after they ravaged his crops. The seeds were crisp and juicy with a spicy finish.
We left the moringa field to visit with a professor at the Zamarano agricultural college. He spoke with us about the school's achievements and its place in the global ag scene. His talk about the school was followed by an indoor presentation by U.S.A. Tom. Tom expects his moringa tree pet project to demonstrate the moringa tree's potential to become the future waste-free, grow-anywhere crop to be used as fuel, food, vitamin supplement, erosion prevention tool and more. Lofty goals for a pet project.
Next we visited Keeny's house for lunch and animals and a walk around campus. It was nice to get out of the city for a relaxed afternoon in Zamarano. We had plenty of time to reflect about our trip so far on the 40ish minute drive home. Dinner back in Tegulcigalpa, then showers and a S.W.O.T. analysis of CREA.
After our fourth day out, the group has gotten a hearty slice of Honduran life. This evening Adrian reflected that we have seen a diverse selection of Honduran poverty, sustainability efforts, social issues, traffic, charity... I could go on. Of course we've also enjoyed eachother's company in deep conversation, laughs and uncomfortably close seating in our Honduran charriot (see picture). Looking forward to tomorrow, aka "Fancy Tuesday" when we will all dress to the nines to meet either the Cardinal or someone else important or both or neither!
Greeshma and the Moringa
::January 17, 2011::
It was a beautiful day today. An early start at 8:30 helped us get to our destination - Zamorano, a US credited university focusing on Agricultaral studies and sustainability by 10 am. The day started with a tour of "Moringa" project by Tom Curin. Moringa project is about the use of Moringa, a plant that grows really fast; whose leaves are rich for in nutrition, pods used by certain Indian and African communities for food, the plant itself used as cattle fodder and also useful to avoid soil erosion-in short, a "Miracle plant" also as bio fuel. This is a experimental and innovative venture as there are no known projects using Moringa for bio fuel. He described the thought process that went into this venture - the various technical reports, the research and extrapolation of experimetns. Unfortunately, we were witness to some of the problems faced by agriculture, in this case, where a neighbor's cows had distroyed more than half the field. It was sad to see the destruction all around.
Shreema's Introduction to CREA
::January 16, 2011::
Today was a special day -- we went to treatment centers for children and teenagers facing an array of unimaginable challenges, and met a group of young people who were often confident, friendly and with an inspring attitude on life. The two centers housed children and teenagers who were sent there by judges and families for drug use and gang activity. On our way to the girl's center, the director of these Centers, Jorge, told us they've dealt with addiction and seen gang assissanations -- all at ages 12 or 13. Once I heard that, I expected to see a group of jaded, reserved girls who would roll their eyes at the sight of Americans coming to observe them. But to our surprise, they were friendly and even innocent. A few of them were delighted to find that I'm of Indian descent, and asked me about Indian food, clothes, what the country looked like and how conservative the culture is. They were in various stages of their recovery process, with some likely just leaving detox, and had mixed feelings about being at the center, they're away from their families and everyday lives, and it wasn't their choice to go. It's difficult to think about what will happen to these girls once they leave the center. But it was also inspiring and just plain fun to be able to laugh and relate with them.
