Working Girl

After a few weeks of exploring Panama, waking up late and hanging around all day, I started to get restless. I wanted to work.

Before coming to Panama, I was used to working 8-12 hours a day – and while the change of pace was nice for a short while – I missed waking up with a purpose. I noticed that even in informal social situations, I would manage to steer the conversation to youth work and organizational development in Panama. Do you know when you are hungry and everything around you begins to remind you of food. All of the commercials on TV are of restaurants, everyone around you seems to be eating, you can even smell food in the air. It was like that with me; youth work was everywhere. This internal radar led me to Emily, a softball mom sitting in the stands at a little league practice that Eric was filming. She also happened to be a social worker who worked with the Embassy connecting Panamanian organizations to US resources. Emily led me to Lit, the Director of USAID/Panama. We met for lunch where we talked about life, travel and work. Lit led me to Chris, the Deputy Director of USAID/Panama. And Chris led me to work.

Turns out, USAID recently received money from the US Department of State, to work with youth-based organizations and the police. Money for the Merida Plan was distributed to several Latin American countries to work with the community to reduce drug abuse, gangs and the violence that stems from drugs (the initiative came out of Merida, Mexico). USAID/Panama applied for and received funding towards this initiative. They decided (and rightfully so, I think) to use that money to focus on prevention with youth and communities (rather then intervention or rehabilitation).

The problem for USAID/Panama was that they had never really done youth work before – well it was a problem for them, but a blessing for me. I happened to be asking at the same time that they were looking, and thus I because a working girl once again.

My assignment: To identify 40 organizations providing services to at-risk youth around the country of Panama and create a list documenting the organization’s basic information. In addition, I was asked to create some assessment tools and recommend 10 of these organizations to receive funding and support. And I had one month to do it.

In New York, this assignment might have taken me about 2 weeks. In Panama, I probably needed two years. (And it didn’t help that we also had visitors during the month when I was supposed to be working.) During the last few days of my work month, I was up until 3am, trying desperately to pull it together in time. I see now that I should have tempered my expectations since I was in a Latin American country: only 30% of those who I reached out to had email, and of those, only half ever wrote me back. More phone calls were made then were retuned. Even with the promise of technical support and funding, more than half of the organizations that I reached out to couldn’t pull it together enough to get back to me.

That was the bad news. The good news: I created a kick-butt report, if I do say so myself. Even with the difficult circumstances. I managed to create a report that was thought out and aesthetically pleasing. That is something that I am pretty proud of.

Since February, the project has been extended twice. I have made some extra money, learned a lot about Panama, and built some great professional relationships – and most importantly, I feel like my time in Panama had purpose. It was the gift that kept on giving.