How I Joined the Peace Corp While Having Dinner on the Discovery Channel

O.K. No one panic I didn't actually join the Peace Corp. Seeing as how it's the "United States" Peace Corp, I think I'd have difficulty getting in anyhow. Honestly, I really had no idea what the Peace Corp was until yesterday when I was introduced to a young woman named Emily. She and her husband John, originally from Missouri, are with the Peace Corp and are spending the next two years volunteering with city departments here in Puerto Princesa. They arrived here Monday, after having been pulled off a job in Luzon for "safety" issues (aka local political violence).
I found out by word of mouth that another city employee happened to have a couple of Canadian interns staying with them also. So we arranged to go have drinks at a Kinebuch (owned by an expat Russian/American ex-motocross rider). I set out for Kinebuch only to have the tricycle I was riding run out of gas, and I had to help the driver tip it on its side to drain any remaining fuel from the tank into the engine. No success. So I asked how far it was, and was told with a gesture, "just over there". Naturally, just over there ended up being several blocks in the dark up to the main road, at which point I took another tricycle the kilometer or so down the road to the bar (welcome to Puerto). When I arrived I saw a group of North American looking folks so I walked up to ask if they were the Canadians I was meeting. It ended up being Emily, whom I had met early in the day, her husband, and another Peace Corp volunteer named Roger, from Los Angeles, who is here teaching at the local university. After finding the two Canadians, we all joined up and had a couple of drinks.
So, that was my introduction to the Peace Corp workers as for joining up and the dinner bit. I was invited to go, this morning at 5:15am, with a few people from the Mayor's Office (including my new Peace Corp associates) to a blessing for a dolphin and whale watching venture. Although this group has been operating for a while, this was a PR opportunity for the Mayor and guests (us) to make an appearance, have the group blessed by a local priest, and tour Puerto Princesa Bay in search of dolphins. All of this was part of the promotion of the Mayor's Green City campaign which has seen Puerto transformed from a derelict town into what is becoming quite a nice place to visit. All of this was also caught on tape, not only by local media, but also by a group from the Discovery Channel who accompanied us on the trip and are developing a documentary on Mayor Hagedorn and his developments around Eco-Tourism. After a couple of hours of searching for dolphins (which we ended up seeing about twice), the Americans and I headed back to the city. On the way off the boat I was asked by a local reporter for an interview about the experience, and apparently I was featured on the evening news, although I didn't see it.
This evening, we were guests at a dinner hosted at one of the local hotels, by the Mayor. Apparently, just about every week guests of the city are treated to a wonderful dinner, with a video presentation highlighting developments which Mayor Hagedorn's government have seen realized, along with some singing and dancing by a group of cultural entertainers. In the introduction which was given, while waiting for the mayor to arrive, we were given a brief introduction, at which time, Emily was introduced as the head of the Peace Corp for this region (which she was impressed by) and I was introduced as being part of the U.S Peace Corp. Although I made an attemp to correct the speaker, things just rolled on, and so I just had to laugh. Although I had met the Mayor briefly at the airport on the day I arrived, I'm sure he didn't remember me, and I was told by Melissa, my Agriculture Department contact, that I had been introduced to him in the morning as part of the Peace Corp as well. There are definitely worse things you could be mistaken for.
The cultural show which was put on after dinner, included singing and dancing by a traditional costume clad performers, and included a birthday song to the Mayor (whose birthday is in a few days, and which is a big event, judging by all of the banners strung up across town). The Mayor even got on stage and joined in the singing of a local song about "unity" (once a week they said?) It is nice to see the positive changes that have been made in Puerto under strong leadership, but for a Canadian, all of the song and dance is purely entertaining. It's all a big show. The City's official logo is the peacock and it is easy to see why. All of this wonderful fuss at dinner was, once again, caught on camera under the careful eye of the Discovery Channel crew, who filmed everything from us eating to the the mayor benevolently giving us all local gifts. So keep your TVs tuned. (see more photos)

Generating Ideas

Imagine taking a bunch of house wives or a group of farmers, sitting them down, and asking them to brainstorm and draw, for the first time since they finished school (if they finished school). Imagine that these are all wonderful people who have all sorts of knowledge about the world around them which you are interested in gathering, but they are not used to thinking about the world around them, because they are too busy thinking about getting chores done, and what to make for dinner. What I describe could be just about anywhere. And this is in no way meant as any disrespect to farmers and house wives, for without them, we'd all be lost.
For my first project here in Puerto Princesa City I am focussing on branding and packaging for a group of women cashew processors. As such, I am faced with a typical design predicament. For the uninitiated, design simply looks like the process of making something pretty. And this can be done, more or less easily, with the right knowledge of typography, layout, and some awareness of what constitutes engaging photography or illustration. The difficult part of design is the gathering of information, the analysis of this information, and the synthesis of it into a new idea and form. It is easy enough to make a product look just like another product, but the idea behind a good design is that it takes into account the type of audience (or consumer) for a product, and tries to communicate to them a little bit about where the product is coming from. In addition to this, it is important not only to make this product look unlike everything else around it, so that it stands out, but also to use the correct visual language to imbue the product with additional value in the form of associations to other qualities it may have or inspire. These qualities can be everything from "natural" to "fresh" to "healthy" to "local", all of which make the product more valuable compared to those which are just "as you see them" in a jar or plastic bag.
As a communication designer, it is important for the function of what you do to be incorporated as part of the communication objectives of an overall marketing plan for a product, which includes the identification of a target market, along with pricing, placement, and promotional strategies that will ensure a positive return on all of this effort. The products I'm working with have no real marketing plan, but are rather placed into a supermarket with the hope that they will sell. As I am not a marketing intern, there is only so much I can do in this area that goes beyond suggestions. So, with the necessity of developing something in the time I have, I am left with the need to leave the specifics of a target market up to conjecture and develop a visual language that will communicate something of the qualities that any good local food product should have. I decided, therefore, that in order to gather local information about what qualities are important to the Kasoy Processors of San Jose, I could either spend weeks reading, or I could ask them. My timeline and lack of local information resources makes it implausible to just read about local life, and simply asking 20 different women what goes on around them, didn't seem to be very time appropriate either. So, I decided the best method for gathering info would be to do a group exercise.
This was a great idea, not only for gathering info, but also for showing me just how completely little I know about working with a group of people who know nothing about what I do (which from what I understand, is most businesses when it comes to design). I thought up a series of exercises which included the recording of words to do with the sight, taste, touch, and smell of Cashews and Kasoy fruit. I had them draw something that reminded them of a good memory, their family, tradition, and to list their favourite animal, colour, song, flower, etc. Lastly I got them into groups and brainstormed about words and ideas associated with "local", "safe", "health", "value" and "culture". I would like to have done more, but after a brief presentation on what a design should do, what we did already took a fair bit of time. Exercises like this are valuable because, as a designer, it is easy to get wrapped up in what you like, and overlook what is important to your audience or client. For instance, when having the group brainstorm about "value", I was thinking price, but ended up getting a lot of feedback about family, church, and neighbours. I found that a lot of what I was looking for in terms of local iconography was missed, due to my lack of experience in guiding the process, but even this is a valuable experience for next time. So now comes the tricky part, what do I make of all of this and what else do I need. Time is growing shorter, and the next step is visualization. (see more photos)