working at MCM

My work life is not always the highlight of my blog entries here in Honduras...or in my journal for that matter. However, some days, when you least expect it, there is a moment to celebrate. Friday I had one of those. I think it was what I needed to get me through the day.

At 10am on Friday, Karina, my co-worker, had her second communal bank meeting of the day. I decided to attend this one, since I had been at the 8:00am bank for several weeks but for some reason kept missing out on the 10am bank, Restauracion. You never quite know what you're going to get when you step into a meeting. Some days there isn't too much excitement...other days you join in a party for the kids, play ridiculous games while blindfolded, or you get filled in on the gossip of the neighborhood (always better than the newspaper!).

The great part about this meeting was that almost all of the women were in attendance, and all were able to make at least one week's payment on their loan. They took charge of collecting and were very organized. Karina collected about 14,700 lempiras at this particular meeting (about $735). This is the goal for every meeting, but too often it does not happen like this. The loan officers are having a lot of trouble with attendance at weekly meetings and also with their debt ratios. Often, the meetings are very frustrating, with maybe only 7 or 8 women of 27 attending.

I asked Karina why this bank is so different from her others. She took the time to explain to me that many of these women have medium sized businesses, more service oriented rather then product driven...many live in a nicer part of town, their families have cars, and most have husbands who are around and working. All of this is in contrast to her other bank with major repayment problems--many have small businesses like making tortillas or selling bread...they live in a pretty rough neighborhood, and for one group of women in particular, many are victims of domestic violence. This is usually the reason they don't attend meetings, or can't repay their loans.

Then another loan officer joined in our conversation to discuss why training the socias, or clients, is so important and how the loan officers need to be working on this every week. He was very excited about this and has lots of good ideas. I also got really excited, as it was a small break through in my coworkers opening up to me. I told them that we need to have a longer discussion or Q & A time to discuss all of this, as I need to determine the needs of the clients before we just throw a business school at them that may not be what they want or need.

There is still so much I need to learn, but I was encouraged by the interaction with my coworkers. I have renewed energy to explore their ideas and tap into their experience as I continue on in this rather undefined journey. As I have shared with some of you, I feel like I understand the big picture goal, but am not really sure what that means for day-to-day tasks and expectations. Continue to pray with me in this as I try to find my niche here and try to contribute something useful to this ministry.