Further Communication

By Susan Maxson, 2nd year MDP student

Xochimilco, Mexico City

In our ongoing assignment to improve communication between RITA members and between central office and the members – the difficulties which I enumerated in my last blog – we asked the question “What about using the mail?” “It doesn't work” was the answer by many people in the RITA office.  But one brave person said “I don't think it works, but I don't really know.”  We then emailed the same question to a former MDP professor who had lived in Mexico.  His answer.  “Yes, it works, but it it isn't used very much.”

So Alejandro, Ian and I decided to test the  Mexican mail.  We sent five numbered envelopes to each of four RITA members (twenty letters total) whom we could phone and warn that the test letters were coming.  We asked them to tell us the date that each envelope arrived.

What a surprise!  The furthest place, Chiapas, received all five envelopes in only four days after they were mailed.  In the end, all twenty envelopes arrived promptly.  The Mexican postal system not only worked, it worked well.

This totally revolutionized the conversation about communication at RITA central office.  It opened up possibilities.   Our practicum team put together a proposal of a monthly newsletter which could go to all members whether or not they had a phone or Internet.  The newsletter would not only have articles by RITA head office but would include  photos, stories and events submitted by members.  Through this we hope to encourage horizontal communication between members as well as vertical communication from head office outward.  It is also hoped that  conversations on topics of interest could continue from month to month or be revisited to encourage clarification, and understanding of ideas or exchanges of practises which work in one area and might be tried in another.

Working on sending the "test letters" and the August newsletter

These are big hopes to pin on one small monthly newsletter.  But when communication has been so difficult, and the only good communication is the General Assembly every three years, this is exciting stuff.

Now the newsletter is written and ready to go out, but addresses are proving to be the difficulty.  There is no data base with all of the member addresses in it.  There did not seem to be a reason to collect them in the past.  We spent the last few weeks of our practicum trying to find addresses.  We have not been particularly successful.  We have only 21 addresses of the 120 members. So we are back to the grapevine method of communication.  We are putting an insert into all of the newsletters that are being mailed out asking for all of the addresses of members that they might know so next month RITA can send out more newsletters!

Business experience, definitely an asset for a Development Practitioner

By Alejandro Dominguez-Suberbie, 2nd year MDP student

One of many of the activities that we MDP students (Alejandro Dominguez-Suberbie, Susan Maxson, and Ian Toal) did during our placement in Mexico was organizing with RITA a field visit to the state of Hidalgo, where one of the members of RITA, the Red Hñahñu is located. The main objective of the field trip was to get to know this member of the network and their tourism projects. Also, we wanted to conduct an assessment and provide feedback on the organizational and marketing capacity of  Red Hñahñu. This would be beneficial to both the organization and to the Indigenous Tourism directors at RITA.

After the field visit, the three of us designed and implemented a working session with members of the Red Hñahñu. The members requested that the meeting would focus on marketing.

Overall, we saw that the products and services needed more development and testing in order to find the proper market for them. Signage, was a very important topic. A comment underlined the importance of signage, was one that Susan Maxson made “you will never know about the potential customers who have gotten lost on the way to your business." 

We also talked about product development and testing, marketing strategies, and the target market.

At the end of the meeting we passed out a questionnaire related to the communication project we were working on simultaneously regarding RITA’s monthly newsletter. This questionnaire include three questions:

What information do you want to receive from RITA?

What information do you want to receive from other members?

What information do you want to share in the newsletter?

We presented these results to RITA’s board and the project was approved.

Communication Project in Mexico

By Susan Maxson, 2nd year MDP student

The office of La Red Indígena de Turismo de México (RITA)

So how does an umbrella organization work when communication is very poor?  The answer is - with great difficulty.  RITA is a tourist umbrella organization here in Mexico with 120  members.  Rita endeavors to support these indigenous member organizations in starting and running tourism operations that reflect and value their indigenous identities.  

Our assignment as development practitioners for the MDP program  was to work out a communication strategy that would help RITA to respond to the needs of its members and build communication channels that would facilitate growth.  

This has turned out to be a very challenging assignment.  Our first surprise was that the phone contact list only had 60 member organizations on it. Where were the other 60 members?  It turned out that they did not have phones and were getting their information from other member organizations because even cell phone coverage is lacking in many of the areas where the indigenous communities are. We then planned on focusing on the 60, but have since found out that even though these groups have phones,  they are an unreliable and many of the contact numbers are actually the village phones. A message must be left, and the person RITA is trying to contact will phone back – maybe!  

What about alternate forms of communication? The postal system in Mexico is not used much as it is not considered reliable.  A few of the members have internet, but the understanding of technology is low, and emails often do not get answered.  Education of many of the members is low, and some are operating in a second language – Spanish. There is a huge need for technical information (such as how to set up an email account) to be rewritten in simple language. 

There are a few members who have totally joined the internet age and even have their own web pages, but these are the exception.   RITA, as an umbrella organization, wants to reach all of its members.  It wants them to receive needed information, and be able to give their input into the services that they would like RITA to offer.  Our big question is “How might this be done?”  

It is an interesting assignment, and Alejandro, Ian and I have spent a lot of time, first trying to understand all of the dimensions of the problem and then looking for a solution or solutions as will probably be the case.  We have not come up with an answer – how could we?  People more closely involved with the situation have been grappling with it for years.  But we have learned a lot about the importance of communication and the many problems involved in it.  

Susan Maxson

Xochimilco

By Ian Toal, 2nd year MDP student

In order to be close to RITA, the Indigenous tourism group we are working with in Mexico City, Alejandro, Susan and I moved into the barrio of Xochimilco. Located in the south east of Mexico City, Xochimilco is built on land reclaimed from an old lake – all that is left of the water is a system of canals. The canals are in turn created by chinampas, islands built in the water. On these chinampas, people mainly grow flowers. It is also where RITA has its main office.

Canal in Xochimilco leading to the RITA office

Xochimilco may be an Arrival City, a concept described by Globe and Mail Journalist Doug Saunders. Arrival cities are areas within larger cities where rural people migrate to in order to get a step up into the city proper. Arrival Cities are often called slums, but for Saunders, they are places of activity, creativity and hope as people work to make what they see as a better life for themselves. Xochimilco fits the arrival city pattern. I’m not sure how long the people have lived here, but there are shops everywhere. The place is a hive of activity, with people walking, riding, taking car taxis, bike taxis. Things are being scavenged, refurbished, reused, modified, sold, used to fix houses, cars, bikes, whatever. There are bakeries, fruit and vegetable stands, tortillarias, clothing stores, internet cafes, gas trucks, water

It is not a rich place, and life seems pretty hard. There is an occasional refurbished house, but it looks like the kind of place that the older inhabitants left and the rural people moved in to. As a thought experiment, we pondered whether Xochimilco needs ‘development’, and if so, what kind.

As good development practitioners, we would have to ask the people of the neighbourhood whether they wanted development, and what kind. We can’t do that, not yet, perhaps never. But looking around and observing can be very informative. What we see are people who are busy. There are few people just hanging around. People look decently dressed, and well nourished. The shops are not bustling, but are generally quite busy. Stuff is getting done. Things necessary for life are available, and at reasonable rates. There are four or five schools in the area, and we’ve seen long lines of young people waiting to take University entrance exams. There are also several Alcoholics Anonymous places around, which implies problem drinking, but they also indicate hope – people don’t attend AA unless they want to make their lives better.

It’s possible that many of the young people will not stay in Xochimilco. They may move into other parts of the city when they get their jobs, buy houses, and move their parents closer to them. Apartments won’t stay empty long – other people will arrive, and set up shop where an old one may have closed. It will likely follow the cycle of a successful Arrival City, allowing people to make the transition from outside to the city proper. We all sort of agreed that Xochimilco doesn’t really need development – it seems to be doing pretty good as it is. Perhaps some better sidewalks would make walking a bit more convenient, but that may happen someday.

A view of Xochimilco from the roof of our house