A formal ceremony has started…

Yeah! Finally women have gathered to get the loans that they wanted since we started talking about loans and education business in San Mateo. 

The pre-credit phase for the first group is done. Now 10 women in San Mateo have received their loans. The loa

n average is $20

0. All these women were very happ

y to get their loans and the president of the group gave a nice speech. The executive director of FAPE gave another speech and made an oath with each client -the oath promised to use  the loan for a business and to be responsible and practice solid

arity with the group.  The new group 

borrower is called "Sembradora de San Mateos" (San Mateo Seed Planters). 

You probably want to know what happe

ned with the 50 that I have talked to back in July. We met with around 50 women, but 10 women wer

e prepared to get the loan and business education. We advised some women that the loan was not going to help them, especially because they were going to lose money on their business or because they already h

ad a loan.  Other women had a viable business plan, but they did not want to participate in the business edu

cation courses. Other women did take out a loan but from other organization that is not our partner. These women just wanted a loan because this was more suitable for them.

FAPE, our partner, is forming a new group of borrower so we will have 100 borrowers who are

 ready to be in the program of credit and business education in San Mateo. At the same time, these new 10 borrowers are going to have the first individual meeting as part of the follow up process. Business Advisors (BAs) will have a semiformal conversatio

n

 with each client to give business advice and

 to monitor the client's business progress. 

Namaste now is moving to the second region, Quiche. You can even see the main town of our second region, here is a link of the municipality: http://www.inforpre

ssca.com/chiche/#

 and here is the map, now we are in zone 18:

 http://inforpressca.com/municipal/mapas_w

eb/guatemala.php

Keep reading we will tell you about first "encu

entro" (meeting) with indegenous women in Quiche in 

next blog. 

If you are following our blog, you probably are wondering how we are doing in the field.

Well women did a good job being

 prompt during the interview week. We were kidding with them saying that we are not working

 by the "hora chapina" and that

 we work on "gringo time". We started  at 8:00 am. on Thursday, Friday and we finished at 11:30 on Saturday with the diagnostic or poverty assessment for the potential borrowers.

Most women told us "no se asusten de mi casa" (do not by shocked by my home). Many of these women felt embarrassed of their home. Of course, we told them that for us it is a privilege to be in their home. And yes it is definitely a real privilege for us to be in such humble and simple homes. Most of the houses are made of sheet-metal, wood or block. Half of the floors are made of dirt and many of these houses only have two rooms. All houses have old latrines. These women cook with wood and their house is filled by the smoke of "la lena" (wood). 

All women opened their doors to us with the hope that they are going to get something good for them and their family. These women desperately want money. 

First we interviewed a women with her husband, they were a very humble family. The husband talked with us, the wife said very little. The person who is charge in this family, definitely is the husband. We can understand that, he provides the daily support for the family and she takes care of the children and the house. In addition the culture here is that men make the decisions. We would like to work with this family and generate a business for the woman so she can start being empowered like her husband. We want to introduce something new in this culture. We are sure that we are doing this work with all our good willingness and heart.

We interviewed around thirsty-five women. Each case is different and similar in many ways. 

Many women who have a business do not have a clear idea of how much they are making or their profit. Other women would like to set up a business, but they do not know the cost of her 

 business, the marketing aspects of their business, or the client and

 competition. We explained to them that the business advisors are going to help to elaborate a complete business plan with these aspects. We use the simplest words to explain this role to them, and why we think that it is important for each borrower to have business advisor. We took time to go through their business's expenses and sales. We did this with the

 goal to make them realize that in many cases they are not making any profit. That they invest 600Q to make tortilla and 

they sell 600Q with no profit at all. We also realized that these women use their business to feed their children and this may count as their "ganancias" or their return, and they are satisfied if they at least can feed their children with the food that they are selling in their business. 

Doing this poverty assessment was hard because I had to tighten my heart and hold my tears because it is absolutely very sad to see so much poverty around us. I will never get used to see so much poverty, and we should not rest until everybody reaches a better standard of living, we are definitely blessed to have what we have and we should really do our best to help others to have a fairly living condition. Thank you for being part of Namaste's family working in many ways to reduce this poverty  and create a better reality for the most vulnerable. We know that it is possible and we only need to have the patience and perseverance to reduce poverty through one loan at time and many other social projects. Thank you for reading these blogs and being part of this army against poverty.