Jul
25
2010
An interesting opportunity has come up in my neighborhood of Meadowbrook. The Maple Leaf Lutheran Church is proposing to host the Tent City of Seattle in December.
What I would like to do is to have the Halloween Party I was planning for the Discover Hope Fund in Cajamarca Peru benefit the Tent City.
My reasoning is that most people never inter mingle with the poor, homeless, or disadvantaged. Privilege of the separation of classes is universal. This opportunity puts the homeless in the middle of a residential, potentially more affluent, neighborhood. The juxtaposition is just too good of an opportunity for making something positive out of it.
Most Americans will never go to huts, or a refugee camp, anywhere in the world. This is as close as, I think, any one will ever get to seeing that the world isn’t all four walls, good schools, and color TV. It seems cruel to compare the homeless of the United States to say a Palestinian refugee camp in Jordon, but it is an idea. Millions of people in Africa live in tents, on ground that is granted to their use. South America has some remote areas also, but from my experience is more stable.
So what I propose is, to do the Day of the Dead party on All Hallow’s Eve for the benefit of the Tent City. I’ll change some stuff around and see if that can work. Time is short, so if you have an interest contact me.
Thanks
Apr
3
2010
The reason we rededicated this web site was to raise awareness of Hispanic Employment, both here in the United States, and in Peru. What we have found is that there is very little we can do by ourselves without some push. My first encounter personally with the Discover Hope Fund was an awareness fund raiser by one of our cleaning clients. I think they raised about $1600 by having a meet, and greet in a private home.
What I would like to see, and work toward, is a Halloween party on October 31st, 2010. As the year goes on we will probably change the venue, or scope, but for now let’s talk about having an event.
What we would need first is a place to have the event. I had originally gotten permission for a house, but the neighbors are having an issue with that. We will need a commercial place. Maybe a resturant, or a hall.
The second thing we’ll need is a vacation package, or a first, second, and third prize for a costume contest. Again, I had thought a trip to Mexico, but think somewhere closer here to Seattle would be best. Maybe a couple of nights at the Four Seasons down town.
Next we need a liqour license, a D.J, and decorating committee. Some arranged entertainment would be good to go along with the costume contest.
The proceeds will go to the Discover Hope Fund in Peru, but the focus will be to make people aware of the organization.
Tags: a spring cleaning, aspringcleaning, dave losh, davelosh, david losh, davidlosh, discover hope, Discover Hope Fund, discover peru, discoverhopefund, peru, peru hope, peruhope, seattle homes, seattle house cleaners, Seattle house cleaning, seattlehousecleaners, seattlehousecleaning, spring cleaning | 
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Comments (0) Mar
28
2010
Three of the people we work with on a regular basis are building houses, “back home,” in the countries they come from. They are here in the United States to build a future for themselves, and their families. The jobs they work here are pretty low paying, but that is more than they would ever make staying in Central, or South America.
While here they live a better than average life style. Most of that can be attributed to a deep sense of community. It’s the same as when we travel to other countries. Every one we meet from ”back home” becomes a friend.
There is a lot of sharing, and caring in a stand offish kind of way. It’s a complicated culture that is both competitive, and collaborative at the same time. The one common theme is that these people traveled a long way to make a better life for themselves. It’s a powerful motivation.
In this next year we will be working toward building our community in a variety of ways. The first, and foremost, is helping people with the business that they have. Our second goal for this year is to consolidate more resources.
It seems to me that many people are spread out duplicating tasks. With some of the other web sites we set up this year our hope is that we can direct more interest to our community businesses. We’ll start with home services, and grow into the management of other business interests over the year.
We would like to develop affordable housing. This seems, here in Seattle, to be extremely hard to come by. In order to do that we would need to develop more financial services. We have a pronounced need for bookkeeping, and accounting. We need people who are interested in, and have the ability to, manage projects and people.
Like building a house in our country of origin, we would like to lay the foundation for others future goals.
Tags: a spring cleaning, aspringcleaning, dave losh, davelosh, david losh, davidlosh, discover hope, Discover Hope Fund, discover peru, discoverhopefund, peru, peru hope, peruhope, seattle homes, seattle house cleaners, Seattle house cleaning, seattlehousecleaners, seattlehousecleaning, spring cleaning |
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Comments (0) Feb
28
2010
We are now referring out the sub contractors we use for home renovation. Saul Cortez is one of the people we have relied on for the past couple of years. We are getting a network of people who do cost effective projects around the house.
Saul Cortez can be reached directly at 206-851-4853 or you can call us and we will relay the message. If you need more services such as design we are putting that network together also.
Over this next year we will do work of Home Improvement at a reasonable cost. My feeling is that we are all looking for work, we all have a thing we can do well, and those services can be promoted in one place.
Tags: a spring cleaning, aspringcleaning, dave losh, davelosh, david losh, davidlosh, discover hope, Discover Hope Fund, discover peru, discoverhopefund, peru, peru hope, peruhope, seattle homes, seattle house cleaners, Seattle house cleaning, seattlehousecleaners, seattlehousecleaning, spring cleaning |
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Comments (0) Jan
28
2010
We are in an a new year and this blog is one of four that I set up to promote our business ventures. One of the things that we haven’t talked about is how this all fits together and why.
My wife is from Peru, and one of the first friends of hers that I met was a woman whose husband had died of a heart attack here in the United States. Her house was for sale and the question was if I could help her. I was a licensed Real Estate agent in the State of Washington. There was nothing that I could do, the agent who had the listing had already run it into the ground and it was sold at foreclosure.
The two points of the story are that she didn’t know what to do because her husband had always handled the business end of things, and second was she recovered. Let’s focus on the recovery.
She asked, and we answered that, like my wife, having a cleaning business is the cheapest, quickest, way to get get some cash coming in. She started with two other women from Guatemala who spoke no English. They cleaned about ten houses a week for a few months. She put up the fliers in the markets, handed out pamphlets, and took out an ad in the local paper.
After the first year she had a couple of vans. First she went the way of having all the employees be independent contractors and then finally had them all be employees, she now has eight.
That would be great, but she had an idea to buy a house in Peru, on the beach. Her mother and father live near the beach and scouted for her. It was a little run down. She then sent money from the business down to Peru, and her father watched over the work being done. She now spends about three months of the year in Peru. This is what she accomplished in the ten years that I have known her.
Now you can rationalize any way you want, but I saw a defeated woman create her own future. I also know a lot of people who come to the United States with nothing and become another success story. What is kind of impressing me is that we see men on TV, selling books, or talking about success while women are quietly accumulating wealth.
Just as an aside I’ll point out that by chance Casa Latina in Seattle, and Discover Hope Fund in Peru are women owned charities. There may be a lot of people involved in the operation, but women had the idea and put it all together.
Jan
20
2010
As a boy I read the book Kon Tiki. It recounts the adventure of a guy with a raft who was trying to prove the people of Peru discovered, or settle Easter Island. My friends and I made rafts in different places. It’s really not that hard to do, and it kind of makes sense that if a group of people explored for a decade or two there would be a way to cross the oceans. What also made sense was that in a million years of men wandering the planet some connection could be made between Africa and South America.
I figured this out as a boy, but even today it seems like a point of discussion with most people.
OK, Egypt may be a reach, but West Africa seems a pretty safe bet. There are currents that can carry a raft into the Barbados Islands, Antilles, Haiti, and Bahamas. I picked Peru because of the Kon Tiki book, but if you look at the terrain of North Africa and Peru I can see where some travelers may get the two confused. There are a lot of similarities to me.
Of course my research is just my own opinions. There have been many times I have asked, or have spoken with archaeologists, but it seems to me every body wants to keep their little corner of the world to themselves. The migration of populations seems confined to the Bedouins in Africa and the Great Plain tribes of North America. Maybe archeologists are just happy to be digging in one piece of dirt for a life time.
What I know is there are pyramids all over the Yucatan and in Peru. There are walls of friezes, and paintings of red men. There are similarities to Egypt, and architecture similar to Africa. The faluka boats made of reeds from the Nile are the same design as in Peru.
What if, for thousands of years before there was an England, or Spain, that great civilizations conquered the entire earth? What if North and South America were never really discovered or conquered and we are just guests of a greater society? It makes sense to me that we need to take more care in our relationships with each other. One of my hopes is to elevate the way we think about each other.
Tags: a spring cleaning, aspringcleaning, dave losh, davelosh, david losh, davidlosh, discover hope, Discover Hope Fund, discover peru, discoverhopefund, peru, peru hope, peruhope, seattle homes, seattle house cleaners, Seattle house cleaning, seattlehousecleaners, seattlehousecleaning, spring cleaning |
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Comments (0) Jan
14
2010
We had not been back to Peru for four years and the difference was amazing. There are shopping malls, and super markets. Real Estate prices were soaring with banks lending at modest rates. Consumer credit is a little more sticky. Durable goods orders must be way up, because every where we went there were washers, and dryers. Cars also seem to be in better condition, newer than I remember.
Many of the public works projects that I admired ten years ago are being finished. Telephonica is constructing cell phone towers where ever you look. Many of the international mining projects seem to include a local partnership. There are complaints from some that too much of the development is financed by money from Chile, but the important thing is the taxes are paid in Peru.
It’s hard to make the leap when people see Lima, or any larger city in Peru, that there is still desperate poverty in the jungle, or the mountains. More investment is asking for more returns. Even though the government gets more tax dollars they have an entire country to build. We here in the United States, or the people in Europe, just expect the roads to go somewhere. We expect the freeways will be finished eventually. In Peru, you can look at a project that has been sitting untouched for decades.
There is so much to do, but it looks like today the doors of prosperity may be opening. My hope is that this new found credit will be used responsibly and the housing bubble that is being created can be sustainable, or deflate ever so slowly. In my opinion the global economic crisis happened in the rest of the world as an example of how to manage growth here, in Peru.
Tags: a spring cleaning, aspringcleaning, dave losh, davelosh, david losh, davidlosh, discover hope, Discover Hope Fund, discover peru, discoverhopefund, peru, peru hope, peruhope, seattle homes, seattle house cleaners, Seattle house cleaning, seattlehousecleaners, seattlehousecleaning, spring cleaning |
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Comments (0) Jan
6
2010
Over the Holiday Season I was chit chatting about our business year. It was a good year for us when, from what I understand, other businesses were struggling. This particular conversation touched on unemployment and I was surprised that the gentleman I was talking with brought up immigration. It was a passing comment about immigration adding to the unemployment problem.
I gave him one of those sideways looks and he was a little sheepish. He is after all a dyed in the wool conservative, but still, no one blames immigration any more. With all the goods coming from China we should be grateful to find factory workers who can help us compete. I could go off on a tangent about Unions and Union shops that hold the membership to a certain standard while making concessions that undermine the bidding process.
It has made very little sense to me that we expect manufacturing to remain outside of our borders by not allowing a full range of workers. We talk about Chinese sweat shops, but we prefer to have those goods here in the United States rather than have those workers here, working in our plants, paying taxes in our system, and shipping by our freight.
There are a series of manufacturing plants on the other side of the border in Mexico who don’t have the restrictions of EPA standards. You can see the plants from the United States. They’re right there across the river. How could any regulator think that those pollutants are going to stay on the Mexico side of the border? How did all of the Unions, and government agencies oppose NAFTA while we lost the jobs we were trying to protect?
There is a new study from the Center for American Progress that a comprehensive overhaul of U.S. immigration laws would increase the country’s gross domestic product by $1.5 trillion over a decade.
The $1.5 trillion figure is reached by a calculation that an immigration overhaul would increase U.S. GDP by 0.84% annually.
Of course if you look at the numbers by themselves it makes the assumption that the wages earned here, would stay here, in the United States. They don’t, they are funnelled back to the countries where workers come from, where the families live.
Opening our borders with both Canada, and Mexico, makes sense. If we are capitalists then it will be the survival of the fittest. We are a right to work country. We will prevail because we are the best at what we do, and anything else is an excuse.
Tags: a spring cleaning, aspringcleaning, dave losh, davelosh, david losh, davidlosh, discover hope, Discover Hope Fund, discover peru, discoverhopefund, peru, peru hope, peruhope, seattle homes, seattle house cleaners, Seattle house cleaning, seattlehousecleaners, seattlehousecleaning, spring cleaning |
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Comments (0) Jan
2
2010
After all of these years this site can now pursue it’s original intention. We would like to encourage you to contribute to the global cause of self reliance. Here in the United States we can all take for granted the fact that with a piece of card board and a magic maker we can have an enterprise. We see people on the side of the road or at freeway exits or entrances with signs asking for money. As we say, “only in America.”
When we go to Home Depot and see people milling around that seems like the same thing, to us, here in the United States. In some cases it is the same thing, but the vast majority of people looking for work are doing just that, they want a job. The vast majority of people looking for work would like to have extended hours to feed a family.
Another hard thing for Americans to understand is that people who come here to find any kind of work are feeding a family back home, where ever that is. The entire idea of a mobile society is to find a better life. We in the United States will move across town or across country for a better job. People in our military will move a family around the world. We are also one of the few countries in the world with a military that will take all walks of life and provide them with food and shelter, for a life time.
The purpose here is to give broader opportunity to a mobile society that may only have what we call limited skills. Our first consideration are the people at www.DiscoverHopeFund.com who provide business capital to the people in Cajamarca Peru. Secondly we would also like to help local efforts like the people at www.CasaLatina.com with the on going problem of immigration to the United States.
We have talked about immigration here before and will again, but for right now there are people in the world that we can help. We can help make the world a better place by encouraging these two organizations with the vision that they have. We are asking you to contribute and feel confident your money will find it’s way to the people who need it.
Tags: a spring cleaning, aspringcleaning, dave losh, davelosh, david losh, davidlosh, discover hope, Discover Hope Fund, discover peru, discoverhopefund, peru, peru hope, peruhope, seattle homes, seattle house cleaners, Seattle house cleaning, seattlehousecleaners, seattlehousecleaning, spring cleaning |
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Comments (0) Dec
23
2009
For me, Christmas is about family. No matter who your family is, or becomes, you should make the effort to bring them some comfort, and joy.
Tags: a spring cleaning, aspringcleaning, dave losh, davelosh, david losh, davidlosh, discover hope, Discover Hope Fund, discover peru, discoverhopefund, peru, peru hope, peruhope, seattle homes, seattle house cleaners, Seattle house cleaning, seattlehousecleaners, seattlehousecleaning, spring cleaning |
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