the finale

Last Thursday was the last class for the pilot course “Valores Empresariales” or “Business Values.” Each week, one of the loan officers in the Income Generation Program took turns teaching one of the 8 lessons. Each one included a devotional, some kind of activity or “dinamica,” and the main lesson, with a variety of teaching, discussion, and group work.

It has been rewarding  for me to see this project finally come to fruition. I have worked on the curriculum for awhile now, so helping my coworkers prepare for class was really good and often gave me even more ideas to add to the lesson.  Personally, it was a good way to connect with my coworkers and be more involved in the day-to-day activities of the office.

Yet the most exciting thing for me was to see the women of the bank program come out of their shells a little bit more every week. They were fully engaged in all of the material and seemed to enjoy a chance to have some fun together. Often consumed with the work of running their business and their household, it was cool to see them doing something for themselves and really soaking it all up.

The topic for the last class was “Boundaries of your Business.” The idea is that one’s business is a separate entity from themselves. The business does not have aunts, uncles and cousins asking for money. The business does not have children, nor does it get sick. Instead, the business owner must be careful to separate personal needs from the business needs; protecting the capital of the business and not diminishing the investment needed to grow.

This was a tough lesson because it directly negates what the women believe about running a business. Culturally, this idea does not make a lot of sense. If you own a business, and you have cash on hand, when your family asks for assistance, it is your duty to help. How could you turn away family in need? This idea created a lot of discussion among the women…I only wish we would have had more than an hour to discuss it with them! They were definitely considering the implications of this idea, and how it would affect them personally and in their business.

Freddy, my coworker did a really good job with the lesson. He was well prepared and did not even seem flustered when some of the women disputed the main idea of boundaries in your business. He also prepared some excellent visual aids for the lesson…complete with a bucket of little paper crabs to illustrate a story. I was so excited about his class!

So after the final lesson, we invited the women to return at 5 pm for a dinner and certificate for successful completion of the course. I was in charge of the certificates and the final verbal evaluation of the class at our closing ceremony. It was not without its glitches, and stress, but I think it turned out pretty well. Each woman was so excited to receive her certificate, and the responses from the discussion I led indicated they learned a lot to help them be better business owners. So…I think it was a success! In fact, I’ll even dare to say it was a great success…much learning and fun was had by all!

One feisty old lady who was never shy about sharing her thoughts stood up at the end and thanked everyone who helped prepare the lesson. It meant so much to her that these young guys (most of the loan officers) would take the time to prepare the lesson and show a real interest in teaching the women such important things. She was grateful for the way everything was rooted in biblical lessons and that it was good information for them personally and in their business life.  My heart was warmed by her kind words :)

 

It hasn’t always been clear what my role is here, but after this class I am feeling good about the small amount I can contribute in my time here at MCM. Maybe we won’t end up developing an official business school with 3 trimesters, offering 2 courses a month and 4 classes per week like my boss initially hoped (ambitious, I know :)…but we are at least starting small, and we were successful in offering 1 course, with a lot of important topics. I can’t even tell you how exciting it is to achieve something that seemed so difficult only 4 short months ago. It is also fun to see several of my coworkers who were afraid of teaching accomplish their task, and with great success. I keep asking if they are ready for the next time around…they claim they aren’t. But the difference now is I have full confidence in their ability to do it.

conocer

There is a word in Spanish that I have really come to love and appreciate. The verb "conocer" is translated to mean "to know"...but there are 2 verbs for this word in Spanish. Saber is used for knowing information. Conocer is used when you meet a new person, in general reference to knowing someone, and also used for knowing places. You don't ask someone if they've been to the Pacific Ocean, you ask if they know the Pacific Ocean. I really like the way that sounds...as if each place on the earth has a personality, characteristics that you can't just go and visit and say "Yeah, I've been there..." but you can say instead you know it, like a new friend you just met; someone you'd like to get to know better.

A few weeks ago I went to check out the festival for the Virgin of Suyapa, the namesake of our neighborhood, and of the beautiful basilica that sits at the bottom of the hill. People come from all over Honduras for this week long festival to celebrate the Virgin Suyapa of Honduras. My host family was not really interested in going, as they are not catholic, and have little interest in anything related to catholicism (lots to explore here, but we'l leave it for now). When I came home and shared about my experience inside the Basicila, and then moved on to talk about my upcoming trip to La Campa, my host mom was laughing at me and said "Charissa, you really like to conocer new places, don't you? You are always going to new places and seeing new things." My first thought was, yes, that is the life of a foreigner in Honduras. Always traveling to see another new place.

But then I thought about it for awhile longer, and realized that really is what much of my life has been about. I love knowing new places and learning new things about those places. I love knowing new people, and it especially makes a new place more meaningful for me when I experience it with people, old friends and new. I don't know what that says about me, but I realize that so much of my life has been about seeking out things that are new to me, finding new experiences and using what I know to help process the next unknown.

And so I will segue into my latest adventure to conocer a new place and give you a brief update on my weekend trip to Nicaragua!

The purpose of my 4 days in Managua, the capital of Nicaragua, were to attend a regional conference for small business owners. I was privileged to attend the conference with 2 coworkers from MCM, a bank client who runs his own car-wash business, and 2 great women who work with Diakonia, another lending organization from the Christian Reformed Church here in Honduras. It was fun to travel with them and share the experiences of the conference with them as well.

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.