“YOU WANT TO VISIT ONE OF THE COMMUNITIES? WHY SURE….!” Working with local partners in providing development assistance to rural populations in Central America made the objectives much easier to achieve. The partner’s knowledge of and established involvement with the target communities was an important element in getting things done much more efficiently. There were some disadvantages, though. Whenever I would visit the projects we were implementing with them, the on-the-ground staff would invariably chose the most isolated and hardest-to-get-to locations; I believe mainly to show me just how hard they were working “for the cause.” In 2010, I traveled from Nicaragua to Honduras for a four-day field trip to communities in the mountainous region of Catacamas, in the south-central part of country. The project involved providing community members with access to development funds to carry out small economic and community improvement activities. It...