My last blog posting was about the opera, which means I have to cover three days altogether about Puerta 18 where we spent a lot of time this week. Our main task was to listen - and maybe to ask some questions that encourage our interview partners to get even deeper into the topics. And as we were interested in almost every aspect that concerns Puerta 18, this was a promising task.
Our scope of work for this Social Sabbatical is to work with Puerta 18 on a concept on how to open new locations for Puerta 18. For this purpose, we tried to find out what makes this place special. During our
first two days, we already learnt a lot. For the rest of the week, we went more deeply into this and thus could check some details and elaborate further on others.
On Wednesday, the Pyxera team came to visit Puerta 18 in order to see how everything goes, both from Puerta 18's perspective and from ours. Rodrigo and Carolina from Pyxera, as well as Social Sabbatical alumni Eliana came by. We worked a bit on collecting all aspects that are important for the new locations of Puerta 18. For this purpose, we used large Post Its, collected all points on a wall. Later, we rearranged them and had Federico and Carolina from Puerta 18 select their priorities from this collection. With this methodology, we confirmed together with Puerta 18 that we did not leave out any important aspects. In addition, the priorities will directly flow into our revised scope of work.
For the remaining time of this week, we talked to some kids in Puerta 18. First, we did this very informally by just stepping by, having some chats and just collecting impressions. Today, we thought about a short list of questions and conducted two interviews - one with Henrique, 16 years old, another with Amanda, 22 years old. The video interview was filmed with Puerta 18 equipment - we will need it later on for the translation, as the interviews themselves were held in Spanish. Our project assistant Juan Manuel will provide us with subtitles. With both kids (well, if you still want to call a >20 year old one a "kid"... - in Puerta 18, we felt that this expression is used very respectfully and full of pride), the interviews ended very emotionally, as both expressed that Puerta 18 is a special and unique place for them. It was a very touching experience, and also one that confirmed to us that all work really is worth the effort!
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| Meeting of our subteam with Puerta 18 staff (Carolina and Federico) and Pyxera staff (Rodrigo and Carolina, as well as Social Sabbatical alumni Eliana) |
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| Rob presenting our work with the collection of aspects for new Puerta 18 locations - the exercise was quite helpful to get an idea of the completeness (confirm with Puerta 18's view) and the priorities |
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| Graphics design is one activity that Puerta 18 offers - this girl is into anime and showed me her designs |
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| This girl and her team work on a brochure for an art museum - with some games around famous paintings |
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| Rob and his interview partner Henrique are waiting to start their conversation in front of the camera |
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| The Social Sabbatical Puerta 18 team (from left to right: Rob, Janice, myself) - one week of very eventful, but successful work is behind us! Looking forward to continuing next week - stay tuned! |
