Work and Such

Now for a little bit about the actual work I am doing at Plan’s regional office.  So far we’ve begun our desk review of many of Plan’s capacity studies and background research on the topic of education during emergencies.  This includes reading Plan strategy documents, past performance reviews, country priority documents, etc.  There are 12 country offices within the umbrella of the Plan Regional Office of the Americas: Guatemala, Nicaragua, Haiti, The Dominican Republic, Peru, Ecuador, El Salvador, Brazil, Colombia, Honduras, Bolivia, and Paraguay.  We are specifically looking at Peru, Ecuador, and El Salvador for the Needs Assessment/Evaluation of education in emergencies programs.  

 The outside entrance door to Plan's Regional Office of the Americas 

We also conducted our first interview with a woman from the UN’s Panama office of the International Strategy for Disaster Relief (ISDR/EIRD en espanol).  She was very eager to help and gave us a good overview of what the region and what Plan specifically has been working on in terms of disaster reduction and prevention.  Talking to experts I think will really help give us the background we need before going out in to the field. 

Next week the plan is to continue working on translating questionnaires to Spanish, coming up with templates for interview notes, reading background information, and creating a coding strategy for all of the information we will collect.  We also have a tentative travel schedule for our visits to the country offices.  They are planned around when the country staff can host us, as well as what activities such as workshops and trainings are going on during the period.  

So far, our schedule looks like this:

June 17-July 10 Panama City (prepare materials, background, expert interviews)

July 10-17 Ecuador (information gathering interviews)

July 17-23 El Salvador (information gathering interviews)

July 23-August 1 Peru (information gathering interviews)

August 1-August 12 Panama City (to wrap up the research/write the report) 

 Standing along the "Cinta Costera", running, biking, and walking path near the bay in Panama City