Three Skills Americans Need in Latin America (Video)

[Winston]

Maxwell School, Peer to Peer
Three Skills Americans Need to Prosper in Latin America
Bruce Cudworth, EMPA/EMIR candidate

As the world globalizes, Americans increasingly find themselves living and working in countries around the world. Creating a business and building a life in foreign country presents unique challenges and lessons. Four years ago Bruce Cudworth came back to the US after 20 years in Latin America. He is the founder of an ESL language institute in Chile, where he created bylaws, gained tax-deductible status for his nonprofit and navigated Latin American bureaucracy- including successfully dealing with the Chilean judicial system. He also organized a property owners' committee in a high-crime neighborhood, successfully petitioned City Hall for a zoning change, and chased a car thief. Bruce insists that there are three vital skills needed to succeed as an American expat in Chile: reaching out to authorities, building on-going rapport, and building networks across sectors.

Mr. Bruce Cudworth undertook university studies in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica and Colombia before settling in Chile where he founded an ESL language institute. He is interested in improving Latin American-focused NGO programs through better program design, implementation, monitoring, evaluation and leadership. He intends to use his skills pioneer new and better ways to address market failures in education, health and housing.

[Jester]

Saw this before. The guy accomplishes a lot.

Of course Chile is NOT the hardest country to get things done in.

[yick]

Latin America (outside of the first world...) is still the best bet for permanent relocation.

The Chinese are not offering citizenship anytime soon, the Japanese and South Koreans have only been doing so for the past few years.

I know you'll be upset but to become a Nigerian citizen, you have to have lived there 20 years!

Most of Latin America - 3-5 years and you are a citizen! And once you are - you can do what you want regards making a living, the reason most foreigners aren't making any money is because they are illegal and working on tourist visas, so, if you want to make it there, the first thing to do is become legal. Not easy but definitely doable!

[E Irizarry R&B Singer]

Latin America is garbarge. I vested 11 years in that region of the world. I should have spent time in the Euro countries of LatAm; that's where I screwed up. I'm too jaded to eagerly return to the mestizo areas of LatAm so I'm doing Europe towards the end of next year where there should majorly be semblance of normalcy again there.