Our first week with Accíon Emprendedora

Our first interaction with Accíon Emprendedora was on Monday, and it was the day when we were going to get the rundown of the administrative part of AE and what we´re going to do for the following two months. Eduardo and I started off on the wrong foot because a little miscommunication took us to AE headquarters, which was in downtown, when we were supposed to be in the southeast side of the city. We had to quickly take the metro and switch trains twice to get to Puente Alto. Puente Alto is where the AE interns from Duke are going to be doing most of our work. After showing up thirty minutes late, Eduardo and I joined Callie, Christine, and Sofi in the powerpoint presentation about Accíon Emprendedora.

At the presentation we met Nick, who is going to be our intern director, Alvaro, the AE director at Puente Alto, and the rest of the Puente Alto staff. Accíon Emprendedora is an organization that works with prospective entrepreneurs and current entrepreneurs and conducts classes about how to kick-start and run the business and gives guidance and consulting to those who already have a business and want it to improve. There´s a main office in Santiago Centro that carries out all the administrative business of AE and four offices around Santiago and Chile that deal with their respective constituencies. Puente Alto itself is a mid-to-low income community in Santiago and the majority of students that come to AE classes in Puente Alto are middle-aged adults that only finished the Chilean equivalent of high school.

Alvaro and Nick informed us that our main goals during the two months at AE were going to be to organize the AE alumni party and to conduct surveys about why alumni retention was so low and how to make the alumni party better for next year. Having the alumni come back is important for AE and Alvaro explained to us how only a few return after graduation. Alvaro put us in charge of gathering information about how the alumni feel about the post-graduation info sessions that Puente Alto conducts. We even came up with an idea to stimulate alumni interests by contacting alumni and asking them if they´re willing to give out discounts to their businesses to other AE alumni. The purpose of this is to establish networks so that AE alumni are more willing to come back to post-graduation info sessions.

Tuesday, was the day we met the AE staff in Santiago Centro office as well the staff at the Oficina Central. We met Daniel Rojas, who works at the Oficina Central, and learned that it was his birthday. For his birthday, the staff at the Oficina Central and our group went out to eat pizza at a restaurant downtown. We enjoyed a two-hour long lunch that began around 1:30 since Chilean lunches (or almuerzos) are much later than American ones.

On Wednesday we began our actual work. We´ve been planning the reuninon party which is tentatively scheduled for July 8th and finished writing the surveys that we´re going to give to people in the following weeks. In addition, when we give the people the surveys, we´re going to tell them to come to the alumni reunion.

What felt like a very short, but fun week is winding down and the group is excited for our weekend trip to Valparaiso.