So I have been here in Tegucigalpa, Honduras for just over two weeks now. The first couple pictures that I have included are the view from the patio on the second floor of the apartment I live in. We live across from a convent which is sometimes comforting to know due to the somewhat dangerous part of the city which we live in. However, don't freak out the apartment is completely gated and safe. You just have to be careful walking the half block to get a taxi, just like most cities. My first two weeks have been good so far but always easy. Living in a house with about 14 other people whom I work with can be difficult, especially when everyone tries to cook meals at the same time. The office is located on the first floor of the apartment where we have the option to work from our computers, but generally everyone spreads out throughout the house. Global Brigades (GB) is going to be moving us to most likely just outside of Tegucigalpa, where we will hopefully be living in 2-3 separate houses, making it a little easier to not be on top of each other.
Work has been really great so far, and I'm learning alot. For those of you who do not know, I am a program advisor for the Microfinance team. Take a look at what we do. I just recently updated the projects section..
. Global Brigades brings down students to Panama, Ghana, and Honduras from all over the states and even Europe to do sustainable development projects including: Water, Public Health, Medical, Dental, Environmental, Business, Architecture, and Microfinance.
The Microfinance Brigagdes (MFB) work with the community bank, or Caja Rural. GB seeks out leaders within rural communities in Honduras that are trained to operate the Caja's daily operations such as accounting/book keeping, planning community meetings, and maintaining an agricultural store. Since the communities rely heavily on agriculture, the Cajas in all of our communities have opened the ag stores where community members can purchase fertilizer and herbicides without having to travel to the nearest town (can be 2-3 hours away). If that person doesn't have the money to purchase the goods during planting season, they can out a loan from the ag store and pay it back following the harvest season.
During a brigade, students visit families within different communities and discover their personal aspirations, financial background, and knowledge of the Caja. At the end of the week, the students a party/meeting where they promote the Caja and discuss who they are going to allocate their Community Investment Fund (CIF), which is $100 of each students program fee. Students can do a variety of things with their CIF such as allocate it for loans, individual businesses, or savings accounts.
Since there are no brigades for microfinance this summer, I am working with Danny, the program director and Alex, one of the Honduran staff who is our driver and also a financial specialist. I have visited three of our communities-El Zurzular, Tomatin, and Pajarillos which all have very different Cajas. The first visits we were conducting monitoring reports to discover their current loan circulation, savings balances,etc. You can view all of the documents I am about talk about on the Projects section of the link I included.
One of the first photos of me is with the Caja members in El Zurzular.
The following are from Tomatin and Pajarillos. Right now we are working to create a database of community members to find out their current income and spending and their area of work. This way we know which students to send to homes during brigades. We are also working on doing spotlight interviews with community members who have possibly benefited from the Caja or plan to join. The advantages of the Caja are that they have shares and receive dividends at the end of the year and they also get a lower interest on loans. In some communities, the Cajas have increased membership immensely like in Zurzular but have accumulated little in savings. But in Tomatin, they have less members but a great increase in savings.
So far, I am learning a lot in terms of Spanish finance related vocabulary and loving visiting the communities. I still haven't corresponded much with students since its summer and there also aren't any MFBs until December.
This past weekend, I hiked with some of the staff to a waterfall outside of the city. As you can see by the pictures it was beautiful!
THis weekend, we are going to the beach in Amapala which is about 3 hrs south of "Tegus" since we have 4th of July off. It will be awesome and will have more to say after that!
