It’s been quite a while since I last posted on here. I’ve been doing some travelling and getting my feet back on the ground at my university to finish up my last year of undergrad. 

Now that I’ve geared up for my classes and took some time to organize, I can finally post about what my next big project is! This fall, I plan to participate in the Collegiate Entrepreneurs’ Organizations’ Annual Conference, which includes an elevator pitch competition. For the competition, I will be writing a business concept statement and will have one minute and a half to pitch my idea to business professionals acting as judges. 

Of course, I want to pitch a business that integrates technology projects within classrooms, focusing on Latin American projects. There are several reasons why I have chosen to do this. My experience in Uruguay obviously plays a huge factor; but, after endless discussions with people working in this field and from my own findings (or lack thereof), I think this is an absolutely necessary business to start. 

More specifically, I see a real need for monitoring and evaluation services. Not only have a read documents presented by USAID and other like organizations marking the lack of monitoring and evaluation, but I have witnessed it firsthand. It’s not to say that these things do not exist and that people aren’t trying to do there best in this area. However, I am concerned that without centralizing the information on a user friendly platform the knowledge existing may not be maximized.

With the amount of money going into these projects (which is incredible by the way), I think the only way to make them truly sustainable, replicable, and effective is to monitor and evaluate their impact from start to finish. 

As of right now, I am trying to figure out whether or not to make it a non-profit or for-profit. There are a few ways to go about making it a for-profit which I may outline in my next post after I give it more thought. What I need to work out is how I would be able to make it a for-profit while keeping the end product of analysis and recommendations part of an open knowledge database. 

The open knowledge database would serve to provide not only a centralized location for the research and analysis, but also as a resource for those who are wanting to start their own projects or even investors of potential products.

This is what I’ve come up with after my experiences. If anyone has any suggestions, comments or concerns (any feedback really), I would greatly appreciate it! My contact information is on my About Me page.

PS: I’ll be updating my Wikimedia post soon.