Against the wind, raining and lightening…

August 20, 2008

…We had our meeting with San Mateo women at “Semillas de Amor y Esperanza” (Seeds of Love and Hope) center. Semillas de Amor y Esperanza is a small NGO that operates small community projects in San Mateo. Lyz, our leader and community facilitator, is the founder of this organization. This past Sunday, Lyz and I went to church to ask permission to publicize our program of credit and education in San Mateo during the mass. We also invited them to the meeting for this Tuesday. Twenty women and eight children came to the meeting. We had a lot to plan with the women. We started the meeting in Guatemala time, so we really were tight with time.

We presented to the women the idea of the business education and business advisor. We introduced this idea again because these initiatives of having a business advisor, as a mentor, in addition of business education and vocational training are foreign to them. We also explained that they have to pay a minimal amount for this. We made clear that Namaste will pay 370Q ($50) for each women to participate in the vocational training such as animal husbandry, textile design, etc and each women will pay 25Q ($3) for this service. In addition, Namaste will pay 500Q ($67) for having business education, mentorship and a personal business advisor for each woman; and that woman will need to pay 50Q ($7) for this service. Studies have shown that when people pay services or product then they value more whatever they are paying for. We want these women to feel that they own and “buy” these services. We also explained that we are doing this to see if having all these services and a loan can guarantee women success in their business. Moreover, these Q75 will have a money back guarantee. What this means is that if in the end of the cycle women would feel that it was not worth it to pay Q75 for these services, Namaste will reimburse their money. This policy will furthermore help Namaste to evaluate if the education part is worth it for the client and if the education business and mentorship was delivered effectively. Women were pleased that these services come with a guarantee.

After having explained this important piece, Jim, the program regional assistant, was introduced as the women’s business advisor. Jim explained with examples what he is going to do during this 6 month loan cycle and he asked permission to go their home to proceed with the baseline study and to do the feasibility study for each business this week. Then, we started asking women what are the best time and day that Jim and I can visit them. This part was a little bit hectic and funny as well, especially the part when we asked their addresses. Many women did not know their exact address. We asked them “Donde vives? (Where do you live?) Most of them answered, “Arriba en la loma en un callejon” (up in the hill on the alley). Finally, we founded solutions in how to get their home, and we will see if we actually could get to their home, we will tell you our adventure in finding our client’s home. As you remember, we are implementing the pilot program and we want to evaluate and monitor the progress and impact that the business education, mentorship, personal business advisors and credit have on the women’s businesses and the general social-economic situation. Therefore Namaste team has designed evaluation surveys that we will use to compare results with a control group. This control group will only have credit. San Mateo women are borrowers who are going to receive credit and business education; therefore, we will have three individual meeting at the borrower’s home to before FAPE disburses the credit.

Well, Jim and I will be in San Mateo doing the baseline and feasibility study in the next following weeks. We will be very busy but we will do our best to keep you informed through our blogs. Please do not hesitate to contact us at nelly@namaste-direct if you are eager to know how we are doing. We would love to hear from you.