Day 10 for the Microfinance Team: Lauren’s Perspective
Lauren trying to decide how many coconut necklaces to buy.
During one of our meetings with Ivelisse, the director of the microfinance program, our group came up with a skit to demonstrate savings for the women of Caminante. This year, Ivelissa really wants to incorporate savings into the microfinance program because she thinks that it will help the women greatly if they ever end up in a financial crisis. Our group also agrees that savings is an important concept for these women to understand.
The Skit: Javonne played as a tailor who hemmed and patched up various items for customers. Rachel, Rodney, and Natalie were customers of Javonne and brought in items to be fixed. After Javonne tailored her customer’s items, she put 10% of her earned money into the savings jar. 6 months later, Javonne saved hundreds of pesos from saving just a little bit each day. This goal of this demonstration was to show the power of savings to the women. Surprisingly, over 50 women showed up this day for Ivelisse’s presentation, the skit, and the short PowerPoint presentation that our team made about savings. Turns out, the women really enjoyed our skit and they seemed to grasp the concept of savings better than they did when they first walked in. This was only the start of our microfinance project, and we hope that we contributed greatly to these women. One of our main goals for this microfinance project is sustainability. Over the years of developing this project, we should be able to accomplish this task. -Lauren
