¡Que lo que!
Que lo que (What the what?) is the most popular slang phrase from the Dominican Republic. People use it to greet others, like “what’s up”.
Jose Antonio (the man that is starting a natural juice business) is doing great! We now have a logo designed for his business and he is working towards a weekly savings plan so that he can buy a blender. He is such a hard worker. Every time we meet with him, his pulls out his notebook full of questions and comments. Last week his homework was to talk to two potential customers within a couple of days to see if they would be interested in becoming clients of his new business. Jose went above and beyond and talked to almost twenty different stores and solidified six of them as clients. He is so eager to learn and loves what we are teaching. We visited him today – and he brought his sister so that we could start teaching her!
It has been amazing to see the impact this program can have on people’s lives.
We’ve also started teaching classes at two high schools that are hosted by a foundation called Fundación MIR. They have a boy’s school and a girl’s school. At both schools they teach technical skills such as, accounting, cooking, cosmetology, machine repair, and nursing. Between the two schools, we teach a total of ten business classes. After graduating from high school with a technical title, most of the students have entrepreneurial desires. We hope to give them the opportunity, through teaching them business skills, to break the chain of poverty and make a better future for themselves, their families, and their posterity.
Last week, we visited both schools to coordinate our efforts with the directors. At their insistence, we took a tour of the campuses. The grounds were beautiful – but much more memorable were the reactions to James and Josh at the all-girls school. As we walked past all the groups of girls, we could hear whispering and giggling. They were all so excited that two, cute, American boys were at their school. James and Josh immediately turned bright red with all the attention. Afterwards we decided that it would be better to send James and Josh to the boy’s school, and Sydney and I would stay at the girl’s school… Having handsome boys teaching their classes would just be too distracting.
