The Work Week

This past week I started to notice my work load pick up the most since I have started working with GB. It has been good because I have been getting into a routine. Most mornings I wake up early to do yoga which I am so grateful for. Since I cannot get out too much to walk around during the week, yoga has been the perfect way to start or end my day since I do not need much space to practice. It is also nice because there are few other staff members that also work up early to exercise in the morning and sometimes we will all do yoga together. It is a good way to motivate each other to get moving early.

I also have been eating breakfast everyday, something that I rarely did in college. Usually I was scrambling to get homework done and get my books together and bringing a granola bar or toast with me to class. Its nice to sit down with a group of people in the morning and talking while having breakfast and coffee before starting work.

Michelle, the director of student affairs and also my boss arrived last Thursday, so we have been having several meetings concerning program development and the upcoming student conferences in Chicago and Seattle. I have also been working with the education coordinator to create a curriculum for the education aspect of the Microfinance Brigades.

I was originally supposed to be going to the Chicago conference in August but was informed last Friday that I would be going to Seattle in September instead. I was pretty upset because I had planned to meet my parents there and also visit some friends that I have there. I voiced that the Michelle but since the board ultimately makes the decisions and is paying for me to go, I do not really have a say. I am excited to go to Seattle since I have never been there. I am going to fly to Ohio for a week following to see my family and work from home. So everything always works out in some way.

This past week, like I said was busy. I took on some other tasks outside of my own microfinance program development and advising roles. GB's website and student resource page need lots of updating, so I have been workin on that. I have surprised myself with my ability to make charts and graphs pretty easily in excel and being able to update the website without too many problems. Usually technology challenges me with things like that.

On Thursday, I went to visit the new community called Guaricayan that the Microfinance team is starting a new Caja in. There were about 25 community members that attended our meeting that are interested in being a part of the Caja, about half of them women, which I was pretty excited about.(see *Machismo below) Usually it is difficult to get women involved with the Cajas here because they feel their main role is to work in the home cleaning, cooking, and taking care of their children and husbands. In Guaricayan, we had several women answering questions and excited to become more involved with the Caja. Actually in other countries where microfinance institutions are present, such as India and AFrica, they will only lend to women because women are more financially responsible than men. These institutions have a greater percentage of women who pay back their loans than men. I am interested to see the growth of Guaricayan and how it develops differently than the other Cajas we work with.

Another interesting aspect of GB's microfinance is its relationship with the Public Health (PH) Program, something I did not fully understand before working here. Public Health's brigades work one week in one family's home installing a floor, eco-stove (which creates a pipe that allows smoke to be released outside instead of inside of the house), a pila (pool for washing with a faucet with clean water) and a latrine for waste. Prior to Public Health's involvement, the Water Brigades installs the water systems that allow the families to have clean drinking water. For GB's brigades to work with a family, that family must raise 20% of the money themselves in order to have the students provide the remainder of the funds to do the project. Many family's choose to take a loan from the Caja in order to pay that 20% and then pay it back over an extended period of time.

Normally when we start working in a new community it is in conjunction with PH, like in Guaricayan.PH encouraged Microfinance to get started quickly which we have been , but this past week one of the Honduran staff informed us that PH no longer will be working in Guaricayan. It created some tension and frustration amongst the staff. Since the PH program lead was out of the office last week, we will be meeting with him this week to figure out all of the details.

Overall, the week was productive and fun. There were more staff who ended their contracts this past week and new staff arriving. So everything has been constantly changing and I have been getting to know new people which is fun!



*Machismo is something that exists in all Latin American countries. It refers to men as being "macho" and the dominant gender in society. This is why when you may visit a Latin American country and notice the men cat calling women on the street or just seeing women as inferior. Luckily I have not experienced the cat calling as bad here in Honduras as I did in Argentina. However, in the rural communities men do not feel that women should have the same role in household in terms of making financial and other life changing decisons. After speaking with Hirel and Daisy, who are the two medical students working on GB's Community Health Worker (CHW) program just for the summer, I was told some pretty horrendous stories in reference to machismo. Before I do that, let me briefly explain the CHW program because I feel it is one of the many reasons why this organization is sustainable.

**GB got started only with Medical Brigades, where student groups come to Honduras to set up medical clinics and provide pharmaceuticals and basic medical care. In order to perpetuate the program between brigades, Hirel and Daisy started the CHW program. They trained women in several communities to be able to provide basic nursing care such as vaccines and routine checkups and also to be able to distribute some medicines. Hirel and Daisy have heard so many traumatic life stories from the women they have gotten to know over the years. In reference machismo, nearly all of the women they have trained have been raped or mistreated in some way. One woman gave birth to over 20 children and got pregnant again. With her most child, she had serious complications during labor and needed to go to the hospital. GB staff were present and told the husband that she was going to die if she did not go to the hospital because she was bleeding out and unable to push the baby through. The husband refused to take her to the hospital, so the mother of the woman giving birth stepped in and pulled the baby out. Luckily, after several days of bed rest, this woman recovered, but there are many other women who do not survive a traumatic birth such as this one. Many of the men in the communities see that their wives have been able to manage giving birth to 4-8 children without going to the hospital because they were lucky enough to not have complications. In emergency cases, they still do not see it fit to take their wives to the hospital to receive proper care.