Summer in La Unión, sharing knowledge and experiences

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.”

Marcus Warner studies civil and environmental engineering at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, focusing on hydrology and energy-water-environment sustainability. His knowledge will be valuable for the two water-focused community partnership projects that UMF is currently involved with. Marcus is excited to learn from UMF employees Gilberto, Martir, and Pedro, who creatively approach engineering challenges based on experience rather than formal training. “Perhaps the most valuable thing that this internship will leave me with is motivation. In all of my classes before this summer, the problems that needed solving seemed abstract, even if they were based on a real-world engineering project. However, working with villages through similar problems this summer has given me a powerful frame of reference for future schoolwork.”