Okay, it wasn’t exactly 5 to 9, but it was close enough. Last Wednesday, we accompanied a loan officer as she visited 8 Centros (loan groups) so that we could interview the women who received AlSol loans. This meant that we had to be up and ready to go by 6:30 (an especially impressive feat for Kayela and Shirin who slept through their alarm and got ready in 10 minutes.) Although Angela or Angelita as her clients affectionately called her seemed wide awake and bubbly, we were out of practice on the whole getting up super early thing since our school schedules never required a wake up time before 7:30 at the very earliest. We spent much of the day conducting in-depth interviews with AlSol clients to find out in which business topics they were most interested.
Poor, poor Joel had to conduct all the interviews and on top of that had to say everything once in English and once in Spanish so that everyone knew what was going on. By mid-afternoon not even three cups of coffee could keep him awake. We turned around and suddenly he was gone. Later we found him in the car (see picture).
Although challenging, our work here has been incredibly interesting and we are all feeling extremely fortunate to have been placed on this project. We have spent the last few weeks researching microfinance education programs and interviewing clients and loan officers in the hope that we will be able to leave AlSol with a solid plan for creating a business skills program that will impact their clients’ lives. It often has us discussing and writing up our findings until late in the evening after spending the day in the field, but the coffee in Chiapas is good, strong, and readily available.
Although challenging, our work here has been incredibly interesting and we are all feeling extremely fortunate to have been placed on this project. We have spent the last few weeks researching microfinance education programs and interviewing clients and loan officers in the hope that we will be able to leave AlSol with a solid plan for creating a business skills program that will impact their clients’ lives. It often has us discussing and writing up our findings until late in the evening after spending the day in the field, but the coffee in Chiapas is good, strong, and readily available.
1 comment:
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