Entering the blogosphere

Welcome to my first blog post ever. Usually when I travel I send these long mass emails to everyone I know, but email seems so passe. So here I am, venturing into the modern world with this blog.

I will be spending three months in Bolivia this summer, living in the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra in the eastern part of the country and working for the NGO Fundacion Natura Bolivia. I will be working with another MEM student from Yale to develope a survey instrument that will serve two purposes. First, in its pilot phase we will be evaluating Natura's Payments for Environmental Services projects (more on those in a future post) in a number of communities where Natura has been working. Second, the survey we develop will be used to collect baseline data in communities in the newly established Rio Grande - Valles Crucenos protected area in order to set up a long-term study of the effectiveness of conservation interventions that will be initiated in the coming year or so.

When I arrive and begin to figure out my summer, I'm sure I'll have more to say about my project. And hopefully some fun travel stories too.