Finishing Up 2008

December 16th, 2008

It is sunny, the sky is so blue and beautiful, and James and I are wrapping up things before we leave for home. I am going to Ecuador and James is off to Philadelphia. We are also preparing the last general meeting with our business advisors on Wednesday afternoon. I am also looking forward to our Christmas dinner. You may remember that we were looking for business advisors (BAs) - now we have seven BAs. Yes, we have so much to tell you from our last blog. As they say in Spanish: Más tarde que nunca (better late than never)! I will summarize all our standout experiences in the field as our Christmas gifts for you, our loyal reader. Thank you for reading our stories.

We went to Quiche back on October. It was very special and we met with 26 indigenous women. These women speak K’iche. We had an interpreter who helped us to translate the conversations that we had from Spanish to K’iche and vice versa. Our partner in Quiche is CARE and this organization is also doing great things with our clients. The loan officers from CARE explained the program to the women. They liked the program but they really wanted to receive their loan right away. Then we organized a second meeting to give more clear examples about the program. We met with the BAs for Quiche, Jose and Mary, who taught the business education from Freedom from Hunger. The session is about using your loan for your business. All women were introduced to some new concepts: personal money, money from the business, separating the personal money from the business money. Their faces told me that these topics were new for them. After Jose taught a session in business education, he told the women: “Now, we will see how the business advisors can work with you. We are going to analyze a business.” Then he asked, “Who wants me to analyze her business?” After few minutes, a very small and cute lady told him: “Ok, I will do it”. She said, “My business is the kiosk that you see in front of the school. I sell fruit.” Jose asked her how much just the oranges cost and decided to simply analyze the orange sales portion of her business “la venta de naranjas”. He added up her costs and found out the cost of selling oranges is Q0.63 (~$.08) but she has been selling them for Q.50 (~$.05)! Everybody in the meeting hushed when they realized that the lady who volunteered to publicly analyze her business was selling at a loss. After that I told the women, with the help of the interpreters, that this situation is very common and please do not get discouraged. This is exactly the reason Namaste wants to offer an extra service - business mentorship. I asked the BAs to offer advice to the lady. Maria and Jose told her: you just need to raise the price and you will make a profit. The lady immediately reacted and said, well I can’t do that because my competition sells the oranges cheaper than I do.” We asked her, “Do you think that your competition has the same costs?” She said, “Well lets ask her because she is the meeting, too”. Then we turned to other lady and she said, “Yes I do have the same costs.” Everybody in the meeting was amazed and started chatting with each other and having excited conversations. The BAs told them, “You both need to raise the price of the oranges.” Both ladies said, “We can’t do it because people will not pay a higher price”. We asked the rest of women if they agreed that these ladies would need to raise the price in order to make some kind of profit. Everybody hesitated a little bit in the answer, but then they said, “Yes we will pay the price because they are losing money” After this intense discussion, BAs told them that this is basically the role of the business advisors of Namaste. The BA’s will offer good advice to help their clients make a profit in their businesses. Following this explanation all women in the meeting wanted to have an individual meeting with the BAs. The following day, we realized that the lady was selling the oranges for Q1 ($.13) and everybody was paying the increased price. This was one of the immediate changes that we have seen in the field and we are very happy to tell you that the lady is already making a profit on her business of selling fruit. Not only that, but the community is aware of this and they are willing to pay the price to make it happen. Now we have 38 women in Quiche, each one have has an individual meeting with their BA, and participated in the first business education meeting.

After Quiche, we went to Suchitepéquez, which is southwest of Guatemala. This is also in a rural area but it is on the Coast, whereas Quiche is located in the mountains, north of Guatemala City. We are working with RAIZ, one of Guatemala’s largest microfinance institutions. We hired two women to be our BAs in this region. Our BAs know the region very well and they are themselves leaders in this community. For this reason, we formed small groups very quickly. Right now we have about 54 women with loans and each of these 54 women have had an individual meeting and a business education session. Suchitepéquez has a very diverse mix of indigenous and ladino people. Most of women are ladino (ladino is a mix of Spaniard and indigenous people). The communities where we work are far away from the main towns. One day, I was visiting a community in Suchitepéquez where I had to cross wooden bridge in my car. This bridge was so scary. It feels like it is going to break down, especially when you are in the middle of this bridge, but luckily I survived the round trip. The communities are in remote areas, not very accessible by public transportation. But still, the Namaste team is able to reach the communities.

You probably are wondering how we are doing with the third region: Sacatepéquez, where San Mateo is located. Now we have 20 women with loans and business mentorship. We are not able to get more clients because there is a strong competition amongst microfinance institutions in this area. These institutions are giving credit away very easily and people are receiving loans that are rarely pre-qualified. Our program is very specific that the loan has to be used for the business. This proliferation of microfinance institution in the field is very intense and this makes the recruitment of new clients in this region very difficulty.

Besides all this field work, we have had other exciting activities in Guatemala. We had the wonderful conference and a great donor trip. The conference was a huge success. It was wonderful to put all these businesswomen together. They shared their information with each other, learned from the workshops, and made some international and local new friends. Our donors- perhaps you are one of them- are really amazing people. They are generous and they are incredible. Many of them told me that the experience of sharing with the borrowers is very special and they feel like they learned from each other. I was lucky to get to know some of them and I feel very honored to be with them during a few days of their trip. I really admire them; especially knowing they have taken time from their busy lives to get to know our clients’ worlds. I know everybody got something very special to keep and remember for many years to come.

That was my “brief” update of our activities. I hope you have enjoyed reading these blogs this year and from the bottom of our heart I wish you a Merry Christmas and Great New Year full of Happiness and Love for you and your family. Thank you for being a loyal reader and supporter.