Brigading For A Cause: Global Brigades Panama Day 1

Written by guest blogger Bethany Bowen

To start off, I would like to introduce myself: my name is Bethany, I’m a junior Marketing major at Texas A&M University, and I’m still trying to figure out what that means for my future (suggestions are always welcome). A few weeks ago, I traveled to Panama with the Texas A&M chapter of Global Business Brigades. We visited the small indigenous community of Rio de Este to help people in the village start their chocolate business. That was the entirety of the information we knew when we left for Panama; needless to say we learned a lot during our brigade. I will be blogging about each day of the trip, but I would like to begin with a quick explanation of Global Brigades and how the trip affected me.

Global Brigades is a student-led, development organization whose goal is to empower communities in developing countries. The Web site defines a brigade as “groups of passionate volunteers who mobilize towards positive social change.” There are 10 different types of brigades: medical, business, water, environmental, law, dental, architecture, public health, professional, and microfinance. The heart and sole of Global Brigades are the students who volunteer. There are currently 110 chapters from universities in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Ireland, and that number is always growing. I participated in a Business Brigade, and our goal is to help micro-enterprises in developing countries learn sustainable business practices.

Throughout the week I learned so many things including: how much Spanish I don’t know, how chocolate is made, the economy in a developing country, how to live without a toilet, what a peace corp volunteer does, that life goes on even if I don’t check Facebook every hour, how to apply concepts from my businesses classes to real life, and among many other things, I learned to appreciate life just a little bit more.

OK, now to start the recap. Day 1 began at 2:30 a.m.; I had to be at the airport by 3:30 because our flight left at 6. You would be surprised how busy the airport is at that time of the morning. After a brief layover in Miami, we arrived in Panama City around 3 p.m. By the time we had everyone’s baggage, met our Global Brigade’s leaders, Adrianna and Daniel, and had loaded the vans, it was time for dinner. We ate in Panama City and then we started a 5-hour drive towards Davíd. We learned that Davíd was only the halfway point to our final destination, Rio de Este; our group definitely bonded during the hours and hours of driving throughout the week. That was pretty much it for day one; it was a lot of traveling, and a lot of bottled up excitement for the job ahead of us.