My first great breakthrough!

I just had a great conversation with one of the local fuerza publicas.  By pure chance I walked in looking for your number in the event that PC office needed to call me en case of an emergency.  Two hours later, I finally have a local point man that really really understands the importance of getting the community organized.  From him i learned more in 2 hours then this whole past week and site visit.  Costa rican institutions wont even blink an eye at your if you don't represent a larger good or group of people.  Unfortunately, and logically, because he is a police officer he is forbidden from becoming an official member of any local organizations, but he is free to give me some advise from time to time when I am in a rut (tredding lightly of course).

AHHHAA! Finally a good breakthrough in this place!!! It took a fucking week to find it, but now the snowball will start to role!

Some of our discussion points included that following:
1)Many of the organizations appear to be ineffective or inactive. They haven't achieved very much at the community scale. The cooperative is the success so far and is probably the closest to achieving official national recognition. It could be an organization that State institutions will deal with, where as the Associacion de Desarrollo integral has been inactive for 6 months now.
2)Apparently it is really taxing to organize people. And inbetween the organizations that due exist, there is no communication between them.
3)The Students in the town are very discouraged because there is very little to do here and as such they turn to drinking and drugs.
4)Those that don't take up work in the village (timber, coffee, or a local deal) have to leave the town to find work. Dissatisfaction as to the options that exist here.
5)The internet is a great tool, but probably only for finding information. MIS is not an essential tool among the businesses here and none of them currently use computers. The costs make a computer as sizable investment for something that doesn't have much practical use yet.
6)The coming aula de computacion would be of great interest to locals.
7)After age 14/15 kids are legally able to work (and many do given the pressures within the family). The number of students that go on to University is pitiful. It would be even more interesting to asses what is the population that commutes into Turrialba each day for school and for what.
8)There is the interesting theme of introducing more tourism into Grano de Oro. The Hotel Moravia is well out of the way and appears not to want anything to do with the rest of the town. Unfortunately it is up to Grano de Oro to provide a pull for these tourists that come in private bus loads.
9)There are a couple of good ideas on the table that HGDO should consider regarding tourism:
1.Lodging (bed and breakfasts/hostel/cabinas/motel/rural tourism homestays),
2.internet cafe
3.Souvenir shops,
4.wood work artisan shops,
5.eco-farm,
6.indigenous heritage museum,
7.historical museum,
8.alternative public transport to the one 6am bus.
December 28, 2010