What's on my nicaPOD

I'm starting to really dig Nicaraguan music. It took a while.

Someone told me that to really appreciate the music you have to speak the language.

That doesn't apply in my case. I still don't know what the hell they are saying in these songs . . . but, in any event, in order of my preference:

1. Guerrero del Amor- I really love this one.
   
2. Dias del Amor
3. Machaina
4. Nicaragua, Nicaraguita
   
5. The Chicken Song- My title and you'll know why if you listen to it.

13 Reasons

I was thinking about why helping a Nicaraguan student through BECA is a good thing.

I came up with a list of 13 reasons.

You can check them out here: http://www.beca.org/13-Reasons.html

14 - 3 = 11

14 people applied to study Accounting.

Only 11 remain. Why?


BECA decided to put on its own little "entrance" exam for the students, just to make sure they had some basic math skills.

We just figured that you had better know how to do the likes of addition, division, and multiplication without a calculator if you want to have an accounting job.

I'm glad we did it, but the results really sucked. These people are high school graduates -- all of them -- but three of them got less than 25%.

What to tell these three? All three eager to study something. All three eager to learn a career. All three eager to grab an opportunity with BECA.

In the end, we said something like this: "Your math really doesn't cut the mustard. You deserve an opportunity, though, so you have a month to come up with another career choice. Okay?"

All three were most gracious. Their faces told it all, though.

In two years here in Nicaragua, it was one of my most unpleasant BECA days.

The BECA Blog Shows its Artsy Side

An interesting point of view . . . the BECA blog via a "Word Cloud" perspective.

This is what a year of posts yields:



I like the fact that most of the words have a positive bent.

But "spanking"? Where did that come from?

BECA has a new page on FACEBOOK

Please become a fan of BECA. Please invite your friends to become fans too.

Why?

Well, I'm not really sure, but people tell me it's a good thing.

BECA on Facebook

And Now For Something Completely Different

BECA got its hands on a video camera -- thanks to BECA director Suzanne Bourne.

All together we did four video profiles of new sponsorship candidates. You can check them all out on our spanking new Youtube channel.

Special thanks to BECA student (and ambassador) Sorania Davila. Sorania did the filming.

I like the idea of having videos filmed by the students for the students.

You like?





Aside: My niece Serena would be so proud. You see, it was only six months ago that I called it "the youtube."

Course One 2009 Results

Okay, now that BECA Course One is officially over for 2009, I have some numbers for those of you who pay attention to that kind of stuff.

• 123 students started Course One in 2009
• 97 (or 79% of them) finished
  
• Of those 97 graduates, 65 have applied for a technical career (phase two of the BECA program)

That means 67% of the students who finished the initial screening course have applied for a second scholarship.

That's a lot more than I expected.

The next step is to sort through all of these applications and start putting them on the Web. We're doing that now and we expect to start posting profiles at the end of August.