Spreading the News Perfect Opposites trailer

My toughest job this side of the equator is finally over. Melanie and I have worked hard to create a newsletter detailing our projects and goals. You can check it out by clicking on the tab on the left entitled “Newsletter.” It was a great experience and I struggle to even really call it work. I was so excited to share what we’ve been doing with those who have been supporting us, especially the community of Mary Washington, our families and current donors.

It was, surprisingly, more of a struggle than I thought it would be to get some hard copies printed. With scarce resources and our clients’ financial well-being in the back of our minds, Melanie and I carefully researched copy centers to find the least expensive ones. We had hoped to forge a partnership and perhaps get discount with one store…alas, this turns out to be a bit more difficult than we thought. Instead, we used the university’s copy center and decided to work to create a partnership for future publications.

Enjoy!

Almost There…

In fifty days, the La Ceiba team will board our flight to San Pedro Sula, ready to transform our theories into action. With just three weeks left before our semester ends, we have plenty to do before heading home.

We have shots and malaria pills to take, surveys to translate, grants to apply for, a poverty index to create and other logistical details to decide upon. Many of these tasks are tedious, and perhaps even a bit unexciting. It’s the less sexy part of development work. Before we are can to spend a week in Honduras to reaffirm our dedication to our clients, to extend loans and establish new relationships between La Ceiba, individuals and communities, we’ve got to plan. All this planning will enable us to focus on the task at hand while we’re in the field, especially since unforseen circumstances always arise.– we learned quite a lot about this from the stove project trip last January.

I’m excited to return to Siete de Abril. Without fail, the time spent there has been my favorite part of each of my three trips.  My Spanish is not the greatest, but I’ve had the opportunity to get to know some of the families in the last three years and have both seen and heard of their high and low points that are a part of life– the births and businesses, deaths and medical problems, the struggles for land and power. At heart, Siete is a community, with all the faults, failings, joys and struggles that all communities face, although they are amplified by poverty.

I’m so excited to be able to ask the women who will receive loans what their goals for their business are: Do they want to send their child to school? Provide their families with an extra meal? Get medicine for a sick spouse or parent?  We’ll get to see the impact that the improved stove project and eco-bags have had on the community. And, of course, be able to hand the women the loans they have waited for months to receive. We’ll spend much of our time surveying the villagers, getting a better sense of their needs and assessing the impact our program will have in the future. We’ll meet with organizations in the area and establish partnerships with them.

For now, though, I’ll be helping Christine finish creating our poverty index and working on whatever odd tasks the other Board Members need me to do. We still have a lot of work left to do, but just knowing that the best is yet to come– being there and being a part of something this amazing and unique– makes it more than worth it.

The semester is coming to an end and now it is time to prepare ourselves for going into the field.  This is going to be a very unique experience for me because I have never left the country.  Therefore, I will need to prepare myself for the culture shock of being in a different country so that I will be able to be helpful to our mission while we are down there and not just completely in shock of the different ways of life in Honduras compared to America.  I have had an appointment with the medical staff here on campus to go over all the proper precautions to take medically before going to Honduras and have gotten the proper shots and prescriptions for medication to take before going.  However, I still need to prepare myself mentally for this trip as well as preparing what needs to get done while we are down there. From my part as the accounting department head most of my work is administrative in nature so not much of my specific work will be done down in Honduras therefore I will mostly be helping others accomplish their tasks such as surveys and training whether that is actually helping or occupying our clients children so they can take the surveys and go to training sessions.  Overall I think I will easily be able to handed my tasks down there with respect to just the physical aspect however I will definitely need to prepare some more for the huge culture shock of going to another country for the first time.

Without a Paddle

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot trailer

Our next sets of blogs are supposed to address getting ready for the field.  The good news is in terms of logistics, I am confident that everything is figured out for the monitoring/evaluation.  The flip side is I am still working on the particulars of what we will actually monitor/evaluate.  My work this semester has largely revolved around determining what and how we should monitor La Ceiba.  While I have completed extensive research and have a list of about ten different possibilities, I had felt at a stalemate for a while.  The reason is—I did not want to make an executive decision about something as important as how we gauge our success and failures.  I wanted input and (hopefully) a consensus from our whole team.  Fortunately, we have been able to dedicate the past class and a half to this very topic. 

• The Steam Experiment release

Our discussion in class proved very lively, and I feel that important points and questions were brought up with the whole class.  In fact, our discussion ultimately led back to our theory on economic development.  And, perhaps, that is where the blur is.  No one knows the perfect chain of causation for economic development.  However, I do not find this disheartening because I advocate that there is no perfect chain of causation.  Is it crazy to think that every individual may have a unique path to their own economic development?  I don’t think so.  I see the importance in big picture ideas, for they are the best place to start.  But, I do not see the purpose into holding onto big picture ideas when we can get the real ideas.

Here is my proposal.  All the women cite they want to participate with La Ceiba to increase their income.  But, let us ask them why? Let us have them lay out a list of goals they want to achieve with increased income.  Do they want more money to buy food, medicine, clothes or something else entirely?  And then, after a completion of a loan round, let us ask them if they progressed in reaching these goals.  That ground level, that micro-level, is where I believe the real progress lies, especially in the short term.  If we focus on helping our clients achieve success in the short term, we can then notice failures and necessary adjustments earlier.  As a result, long term success will become more viable!   

Now, this is certainly easier said than done.  And, to some extent, it has never been done.  As undergraduates, blazing a new path may seem a bit ambitious.  But, why not?  We have the time, the resources and our program is small enough that we can gauge success on an individual customized level.   This is part one of my proposal.

Part two of my proposal is to also possess a standard poverty index measure.  This would be much like Grameen’s 10 indicators of poverty, or David Gordon’s list of absolute poverty. As to what should be included in this list, is widely unknown.  No such poverty index (that we can find) has been created for Honduras, needless to say for Siete de Abril.  However, Megan is working on researching what other local MFIs in Honduras use.  Pulp Fiction film From here, we hope to develop our own.

Part three of my proposal is arguably the easiest because it has been done before.  Our “institutional measures”, in particular our success as an MFI, will be gauged using UNDP Core Performance Indicators for Microfinance.

I believe the combination of all three parts of my proposal is our best option.  That is, I propose we measure the affect of La Ceiba via: 1) how our clients reach their individual goals, 2) a poverty index customized to Siete de Abril and 3) standard institutional measures.  Even more so, I believe with careful thought all of this can be measured effectively and effeciently, I’m excited as to what insight such a broad spanning look will give us!      

• The Perfect Assistant move