If La Unión had a tourism industry, its high season would
be June. Many visitors, new and returning, come to town as their school year
ends, but they aren’t coming as tourists. Sure, the tropical green mountains
and open views of the valleys are impossible to miss on the drive into town.
But most of these visitors are coming to meet new friends (and possibly visit
old ones), and continue building partnerships between their respective communities.
And for three interns, these relationships will be formed over their 10 weeks
in Honduras.
As with previous summers, Unión MicroFinanza hosts
interns for the summer months to assist with and learn about community
partnership projects (watch the blog to read about new projects!) and the
microloan, training and coffee programs. These interns also provide the
organization with valuable research on topics varying from coffee leaf rust to
markets and savings.
Besides this, summer interns live in the town and spend
time with the people who live here. They will take these experiences and new
perspectives with them as they return to their universities and friends in the
States. This year, four interns are joining UMF, with one arriving later in the
summer. Aidan Baldwin, Andreas Vailakis, and Marcus Warner have different areas
of study and interests, which allows them to work on a variety of projects with
the organization.
Aidan comes from the University of Notre Dame, where he
is studying finance and entrepreneurship. Along with the other interns, he is
helping organize and carry out distribution of June microloans. Aidan has already
noted that some of the needs and resources in these communities differ from those
he has visited in other developing countries. He’ll be hearing more about
market access for small farmers in La Unión, and more about Aldea Coffee, which
sells La Unión coffee in the U.S. Besides this, Aidan hopes to improve his
Spanish, aided by the Honduran UMF staff.
Andreas is studying for his master’s degree in social
enterprise from American University, concentrating on international development
in Latin America and monitoring and evaluation. In addition to working on a
monitoring and evaluation plan for UMF programs, Andreas is interested in
learning more about the savings strategies of households in La Unión, including
investing in and selling non-perishable goods. During his internship, Andreas
is staying with a farmer in UMF’s coffee training program. In living with them,
he has noticed that women in La Unión have just as much work to do as the men:
“Although Martha, the mother, is nearly the same age as me, she feels like my
Honduran mom. I’m impressed by how hard she works and how much she does in the
day. She is typically the first one to wake up in the family and the last one
to bed, and I almost never see her taking a break.”
