Social Sabbatical: Third week in Florianópolis
We are now on our third week, there’s so much that we have accomplished. Before we know it, the assignment is over and we are going back to our normal lives.
The first week was the discovery phase: introductions, everyone’s settling in, getting accustomed to the new environment, exploring what the place has to offer, the team tries to reconvene after work hours to catch a bite or drink, we tend to do things all together as a big group. It was the week where we intend to listen, observe and absorb.
By the second week, the collective observation was that everyone’s slowly falling back to their respective paces, catching their own rhythm, eating at their own time and where their taste buds take them rather than going all together in one group. On the work front, tasks have been laid out and we do our best to execute them timely.
By the third week, for us in FUCAS, we have celebrated big victories even in the smallest ways. In order to achieve our objectives and get a better understanding of how things are in FUCAS, we have been involved in numerous activities such as interviewing people from all levels in FUCAS, visiting the beneficiaries’ communities, holding a Design Thinking session, and even playing sports with the kids!
This week, we are finalizing our documents, getting our stakeholders to sign off, and we are just about ready to submit and present our deliverables. We are right on track and hopefully no surprises on the final week!
The island of Florianopolis, or locally called Floripa, boasts of 42 beaches. I came from a tropical country as well, but I have never been happier to soak in some sun that weekend. Probably because it has been cloudy and raining the whole week. I took the local bus alone and went to the beach on the south side of the island. I got lost along the way but it was okay. I guess that happens when you don’t fluently speak the local language. Will I do it again? Definitely!
