Today was a whirlwind trip to the United States Embassy, a meeting with the planners in charge of Piletones’ future, and a mind mapping session focusing on the master plan and the daycare.

The Ambassador herself wasn’t able to make it to our meeting today, which was a bit of a shame, but the man who spoke to us seemed really interested in promoting community action in general and in Piletones and Margarita specifically. I was surprised by his enthusiasm to promote Margarita as a brand nationally within Argentina and internationally. The fact that this small, poor villa has the attention (albeit through mediators) of two national national governments–Argentina and US–is quite impressive. It seems to me, from visiting Piletones, that Margarita is too busy at the moment (or under-staffed) to be able to take full advantage of the attention. It seems like she could use more staff within Piletones, and an office, so that she’s able to work and focus on implementing the greater vision and leaving the day-to-day details.

I’ll be honest, I’m interested in learning about the community, but I’m not very interested in planning it.  I’m incredibly interested in designing improvements to the daycare, but not the master plan. I’m great a asking questions about the development of the community, but my mind goes pretty blank when I try to untangle and solve its complex knot of problems. I’m thoroughly impressed by the planners we met today because they seemed to have a fairly solid hold upon the issues and ways to realistically fix them or theoretical fixes to test.