July 9 - July 27 (Weeks 10 and 11)

We are at the tail end of our internship. As a matter of fact Kory and Annie are already home! I just recently returned to Trujillo from traveling Peru. It was great. Peru is an amazing place; there seems to be a never ending list of cool things to see here. Even though Peru isn’t huge there is a lot of history here and every place is so distinct! Whether you have thought about traveling to Peru or not…..you should, they seem to have something for everyone; Big City, Jungle, Mountains, Ruins, Catacombs, Floating houses... They got it all! (and if you want advise or tips hit me up!) Once again the photos in this post don't coincide with the vast majority of this post. If it helps, think of them as an addition to the "Travel Peru" plug!

OK, now that I got my Peru plug in here let me move on to business.  I haven’t been here for a week and a half but I will do my best to give the rundown. 

In the past couple week’s several major things have happened for Danper, as a company.  Bad news first. A sky lantern from a nearby party started a fire at the plant that consumed two storehouses. Luckily these storehouses contained nothing too important. One stored packaging materials and the other stored old documents that are no longer of much use (other than say audits). That being said, the week before Elena has been traveling to all Danper’s local production fields participating in a large audit. The audit went well and now we are glad to have her back. As for the exciting news; for the past year and a half Danper has been in the process of securing a 38.5 Million Dollar loan from El Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo. This week the loan was granted. This loan will help Danper restructure their debt from short-term to medium-term. It’s a big win for the company.Danper Recibe Prestamo de $38.5 Millones

Needless to say Danper has been dealing with a lot the last little while and it has taken a while to get the final approval on the projects.  The past Week we met with most of participants to give them the news. With two of them (Restaurant Gloria, and Internet Filipe) we have already started the legal work, which means going to the Notary and dealing with SUNAT (like the IRS, but for Peru).  With all government entities, this is not always pleasurable, and can be quite time consuming. We are still trying to get in touch with Eric and Rossi. Rossi has been busy with work, and all Erick’s known phone numbers are no longer in service, but we are working on it.

This coming week the Employments center student will be informed if their plans were approved or not. Patience is going to be important for them.  There is still a lot of questions but the Brother Leyva is planning on finding a full time employee within the next couple months. Hopefully the person they hire will have the experience to make things happen quickly, we want these participants to keep their excitement for their projects.

This Coming Week is Fiestas Patrias; Parties to commemorate the independence of Peru. It’s a BIG DEAL. Most people get Monday and Tuesday off, including us, so I am looking forward to experiencing my First Fiestas Patrias!

Till Next Week,

Cheers!

June 30- July 7

 

It just hasn’t been the same since the Go-Global students left. As mentioned in the previous blog post we had a total of 8 projects unofficially approved and have been waiting on the official document to get the legal work started.  The work, which hasn’t been nearly as much, has also been much less glamourous the last little while. When there is work concerning the future projects, it’s usually creating excel templates and/or importing them into folders and laying the OneDrive infrastructure for the new Danper projects.

This past Friday we received the official approval of projects from Wasatch. Tomorrow Elena will meet with the engineers and directors of Danper for the final review and adjustment of terms. We will be giving the participants the good, or bad, news later this week after the final sign-off.  It has surly been a long couple of weeks for them.

We are still having some difficulty as far as payment is concerned on a couple of loans. With both the Carpentaria and the small dairy farm, we may resort to liquidation. The Carpenteria seems to be a perpetual loan nightmare that spans across not just months, but years.  It has great potential however, it has not been managed well; neither the loan, nor the business.  The dairy farm also has potential, but they consistently put their obligation to us on the back burner. They are focused on growing the business, but they don’t understand how to separate their personal finances from the business finances, and completely ignore the financial ramifications of their decisions. With the current situation, they just seem to be overextending, despite our weekly meetings.

There is still quite a bit of mystery surrounding how the Employment Center/ Self Sufficiency Group will receive funding and how it will be managed. At this point no one seems to know what to do. We were able to have a couple meeting between Wasatch and Juan Leyva, but there is still a lot to be done.  We feel in order to move forward we just need to buckle down, and start spending some serious time hashing out the details and getting the ball rolling.  Hopefully this will give us an opportunity to use some of the entrepreneurial skills we have been teaching the students.

On a more light-hearted and less work-related note, Vanessa (Danpers new Social Responsibility intern from Switzerland) Decided to go Check out some of the sites around Trujillo. For anyone coming in the future, Huaca de la Luna and Show Del Caballo Peruano de Paso, are pretty cool. We also learned that we have access to the roof of our apartment and I took a little time to capture some fun night shots with a super wide-angle lens. Because it would be rather boring to look at pictures of us doing excel sheets, the photos this week don't have much to do with work. Hopefully anyone reading can find it in their heart to forgive me.