Felicidades Gringa!

So my birthday was just a few days ago and the nice people at work got me a cake:

That's right, it says "Congratulations Gringa." Funny!!!!

My birthday was pretty low key, just a few presents, a few phone calls and a nice dinner at home.

We found out some great news the other day. We wrote a post back in April about a grant we were writing for the microempresa (small business) program we set up with the Escuela Taller. Well, we were actually awarded that grant! Its from the World Bank and for $50,000 - a huge sum for the program, the school or the whole Foundation we work for! There were 5 grants in the WHOLE world of this type being handed out to business incubation programs in the first 2 years of operation - and we are one of them! The money is a "capacity building grant" meaning its a chunk of change meant to improve the program. The catch is that only $5,000 of it can be spent on "stuff" (which is still a good amount) but the rest - $45,000 - has to be spent on trainings, manuals, promotions, etc....not tangible things....and it all has to be spent in a year. Anyway, we are excited about it and so is the Escuela Taller. Peace Corps normally works directly with people and the philosophy is not to hand out money, but help people help themselves. I think that was true in this case as well, as we just helped the director of the Foundation write it, with many of her ideas in the proposal.

On another subject, we are planning on going to Nicaragua in a few weeks to venture out of Honduras for the first real foray. There should be some good photos and stories from that!!!

Thats all we got for now......