Out and About

Looking back, I'm not sure I left the city limits once during my first month in Amman. However, this last week I have gotten out nearly every day for my job and for some random adventuring around Jordan. I've posted some pictures of both: camp activites in Zarqa, a couchsurfing picnic in Zay, and a trip to the Roman ruins at Jerash. Granted all of these places are within a couple hours of Amman and I still have a lot to see in Jordan, but I realize that I have 7 months and would love to not burn out by going to Petra 4 times.

Madrasati Summer Camps:
After drafting forms and going over details all last week, we got to start implementing everything this week at the summer camps in Zarqa, Jerash, Ajlun, and Salt (cities relatively near Amman). It was definitely a week of mixed results: from a somewhat rough start and miscommunications in the beginning to a fairly seemless operation by Thursday. However, one problem that has become apparent is that the number registered for the camps is nearly twice the daily attendance, meaning that we prepared for a lot more kids than we are actually serving.

One very interesting problem that this highlights is the difficulty of providing free services that require registration. The kids were able to sign up and attend the camps free of charge, but many do not actually have access to transportation to get to the schools where they are held (and live as far as 10km away). However, there is no penalty to signing up and then bailing, so of course these kids will sign up and decide later that they can't actually go. My theory is that including a small fee in the registration process would reduce the number of initial registrations, but would greatly increase the correspondence between registration and attendance. Unfortunately, it is a little late to do that this year, so we will have to look into other methods to solve this problem, or more likely just continue to receive way too many sandwiches every day. In many of the case studies we looked at last year in my entrepreneurship classes, social entrepreneurs commented that one of their mistakes was offering services free of charge when a small fee would greatly increase their own effectiveness while not being a burden to most of their clients.

Also, this week has seen a couple very nice changes in the nature of my internship in order to incorporate a bit more of my study of social entrepreneurship and not just my skills in English and photography. Currently I am looking a bit into the difference between community development and organization (I would love any input from those of you more experienced in these fields), and will be helping a bit as Ruwwad looks to alter some of their programs and incorporate an emphasis on socially entrepreneurial practices in both their structure and in their teaching programs. However, it is difficult walking the line between observing and consulting on one hand and giving culturally biased advice that will not be easily implemented or accepted on the other. I have heard stories about businesses in the Middle East bringing in consultants to help improve their business practices, but the changes suggested were too drastic and in the end nothing was changed at all. So I understand that while I do have some skills to offer and an outside viewpoint which can be valuable, I still have a lot to learn and will try to be careful to tailor my recommendations to the realities faced in Jordan in terms of cultural norms, development level, and current business practices.