Feedback on Microbanks
Herewith a copy of an e-mail sent to Zen Moisey from Juan Forrester, the fellow who administers the Microbanks in Guatemala:
Zen,
This is just to bring you up-to-date on the latest happenings from Parrojas. As you know the ladies of the two groups in Parrojas have been in our program for about three years now and they are going along very well.
I am writing because I will be going up to Parrojas tomorrow to recycle the group from Maria del Carmen â¿¢ 13 ladies who will be receivingQ1,400 (about $186 each) on their latest cycle which will be the 5th loan for this group. And then I will return to Parrojas again at the end of November to recycle the 15 ladies from the original group, 16 ladies who will be in their sixth cycle, and they will probably receive the same or slightly more than the Maria del Carmen group.
As I mentioned before these two groups have been among the best of all my bank groups since the ladies have never missed a single payment, nor has a lady not made a payment. They are very punctual and very faithful in their commit
I may have mentioned before that I will not have any dinner tonight nor breakfast in the morning since, whenever I go near that group of ladies, they sit me down and put huge plates of food and high stacks of tortillas in front of me and don't let me up until I have wiped the plates clean. And then that isn't enough because they bring great baskets of fresh vegetable, picked tomorrow morning from the field, and they load the car until it is down on its springs â¿¢ those tremendous cabbages, carrots by the meter, beets by the ton, lettuces, peas, string beans, squashes, etc. etc.
Perhaps one positive aspect of their lack of income is that they don't have enough left over to buy large bags of fertilizers and insecticides, so that their vegetables come out of the highest quality â¿¢ and organic to boot! These ladies are really something and I would hold them up as examples of the finest use of revolving loan funds anywhere. They are absolutely beautiful women and whenever I have to visit them I do so with great pleasure because it is such a positive experience.
I am waiting for some matching grant funds to arrive from my partner club in Iowa. We had put in a project to buy me a new Suzuki Jimmy, 4WD, because so many of my groups of women are off roads and my poor Ford station-wagon has taken a beating over these part few years and is looking forward to some relief. I hope to have a new vehicle by the time I have to recycle the original Parrojas group in November.
I have been taking photos of all the ladies in my program and I will take copies of the photos up to the ladies tomorrow. And when I have an opportunity I will be sending you copies of the photos. Our great friends, Gail and Alex Zahradnity from the Winnipeg West Rotary Club, and founders of the Trickle-Up Program of D. 5550 to help schools in Latin America, will be returning to Canada en about two weeks so I will see if I can send some photos with them.
A week from Friday I will make a swing down to San Miguel, El Salvador, to help those Rotary Clubs to prepare for the 14th Central American Rotary Project Fair. These have been highly successful events which bring together North American ¨buyers¨with Central American ¨sellers¨, and we get lots of projects placed each year. The wonderful things has been the number of solid and friendly personal relations which have built up over the years and have gone so far beyond our original expectations. We hope to have a good Project Fair in San Miguel between January 18th and 20th, 2007, and we sure would like to have you and some of your colleagues from Edmonton and Calgary come down some time. Raju has come down in the past and we have several other people coming from Western and Eastern Canadian districts. If you can make San Miguel we would certainly like that, and then there is San Jose, Costa Rica in January, 2008, so you have a couple of fine choices. And you would have a chance to visit your ladies if you don't get too much static from Doreen.
Take care and remember that Guatemala is still here and your ladies are being very well attended â¿¢ to such a point that Silvia (my wife of one year), does not like to let me go up to visit these ladies!
Many saludos, Juan