Brigading For A Cause: Global Brigades Panama Day 4

Written by guest blogger Bethany Bowen

I swear the rooster started crowing at 5:30 AM. Day 4 was the first day of workshops! We started the day with a workshop for the whole community. To combat the language and shyness barrier, we decided to start with a few games. I have never laughed so much playing Simon Says in my life; the people loved it. During the workshop, we had a brief introduction to what the other workshops would be about: marketing, accounting, and management, and then let the community decide individually which workshops they wanted to go to. The people seemed really responsive, excited and eager to learn.

Before the afternoon workshops started, our group learned how the cacao beans are processed into chocolate. The beans are dried in the sun for two weeks, baked in a cauldron for about 10 minutes, stripped of their coatings, put through a hand cranked grinder, and then the chocolate is left out to harden. The final product is what we in America refer to as bakers’ chocolate.

I was on the marketing team for workshops, and we had about 15 people from the community attend, which was a very good turnout. The goal of our workshop was to give the people a better understanding of how to market their product. We taught the group the 5 P’s of marketing: price, product, promotion, place, and person. They were very interactive, asking questions and participating in activities. My favorite part of the workshop was playing telephone with everyone. When you play telephone, one person thinks of a phrase and whispers it to the person next to them, the phrase eventually makes it around the group and then you find out how accurately the message was translated. We played three rounds, one in English, one in Spanish, and one in Ngobe. For the first time, it didn’t matter that we didn’t speak the same language, and the phrases of course didn’t come out the same, but it was still hilarious. We used the game to demonstrate the use of word-of-mouth promotion in marketing.

Later that afternoon, we helped the women in the community make dye that they use to color strings that they sow with. They helped us tie-dye shirts; I chose yellow, and I think the women decided to make a joke with my shirt. When they tied it, they put two ties right where the shirt falls on my chest leaving two big tie die circles; I’ll let you imagine what it wound up looking like. Needless to say, everyone had a good laugh.

That night the 18 of us had a meeting to decide how to invest the Community Investment Funds (CIF). We had $1800 to invest, and the community presented us with a list of things they felt were needed to help start their business. The meeting was difficult because we all had different ideas about how the money would be best put to use, but eventually we agreed how to divide up the money and decided to buy most of the things on the community’s list. We spent the rest towards the acquisition of their health certification.

At the end of day four, I felt really encouraged by our progress in the community. Everyone seemed really excited about things they were learning in the workshops, and I felt like I was starting to understand what life was like for the Ngobe people. We finished the day with a game of soccer, Ngobe’s vs. gringos, and surprisingly the gringos won (I think we outnumbered them 3 to 2).