For the past three weeks, a team of four MIIS graduate students on the west coast has been working remotely with Spark on an intense amount of research, in what is quickly growing to be the foundation of blue prints for a social enterprise that we’ll be...
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Whenever I travel, these days that being mostly for Spark, I tend to write quite a bit. Whether in an electronic format, paper journal, or leaving notes for myself in my iPhone, I carry either pages or fragments of information and thoughts. The last time...
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If you ever fly United Airlines, their Hemispheres magazine has a great feature in each issue called “Three Perfect Days in…”. Each month they highlight a different city and recommend restaurants, hotels and activities that make for a perfect vacation in places like Toronto, Munich,...
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Of course one of the most important aspects of Spark’s Partnership Trips is the time that we spend with the children served by the programs. In the case of Las Tias, there are two centers that are run on weekdays: one for adolescents and one...
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Thursday night’s dinner will be one I won’t forget for a while. Our team of six had a full day- in the morning we had gone to the Younger Children’s Project and had a chance to spend several hours playing games with the kids, making...
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One important aspect of our Partnership Trips is to provide opportunities for trip participants and the local staff to interact in meaningful ways. Last night the entire staff of Las Tias (about 12 administrators, teachers and social workers) joined the six of us from Spark...
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Las Tías leadershipArriving in Managua last week, Nicaragua greets you with a massive wave of heat and a medley of distinct smells and sounds. The capital is a combination of endless strings of honking cars, vendors selling everything from plastic toys to flags to fruit...
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8:30am; 95 degrees. I step outside the local supermarket, my eyes squinting in the bright sunlight, trying to hunt down a taxi. Though the interviews I was to start conducting in half hour were only six or seven blocks away, normally a 15 minute walk,...
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I'm in the younger kids' house, just having seen Sandra. The Director of the young children's project and one of the three executive members of the organization, the first time I met her I sensed a distance from her and what I perceived to be...
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Our Director of Partnerships, Lucy, is heading to León, Nicaragua to visit our new partner organization, Las Tías!We introduced Las Tías to the Spark community at our Fall Event in November. Need a refresher? Las Tías was started by 8 women merchants to serve vulnerable...
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