IBD in Mexico
by Mickayela Beatty, MBA 2008
I was excited about our IBD project from the minute I heard about the assignment. Our project had two parts. First, we were named Namaste Direct Fellows. Namaste Direct is a San Francisco based organization that locates and organizes donors in the US to fund microfinance organizations in Guatemala and southern Mexico. As part of this assignment, we traveled with a group of Namaste Direct donors to visit AlSol, a microfinance organization in Chiapas, Mexico. Throughout the week long trip, we interviewed AlSol clients and employees and toured San Cristobal de las casas, the town where AlSol is located. Later, we chronicled these experiences in letters to Namaste Direct donors to help them understand the connection between their donations and the impact they have on the lives of AlSol clients.
For the second part of our project we worked with AlSol directly. At the time of our trip, they had 13,000 clients and were still growing rapidly. However, as growth was only part of their mission to reach the poor, they also hoped to build a large scale education program to help ensure that clients had the other resources they would need to use their loans effectively. Topics would include health, literacy and business skills. Our project focused on the business skills portion of the program.
Specifically, we performed analysis and developed recommendations for curriculum, costs, method of delivery and implementation plan. As part of this analysis, we were able to visit AlSol clients in San Cristobal municipalities outside the town. The areas we visited ranged from those in remote mountainous areas to which we traveled along winding dirt roads to those who lived in the urban areas of San Cristobal. We interviewed clients to determine how they used their loans and what skills would best help them create more successful businesses. We also learned a great deal about other “credit plus” microfinance programs and the elements that made them successful. Finally, we spent time with the loan officers and executive team at AlSol so that we could understand their capacity to deliver the program. We then created a report and presentation (in English and Spanish!) detailing our recommendations. As of this writing, we have learned that AlSol has plans to move forward with the plan as recommended.
I’m proud of the work that we delivered and feel very fortunate to have worked with a crack team of folks who each contributed in different ways to our final product. Joel Ramirez, with a background in finance and accounting and a particular interest in microfinance provided a great deal of knowledge on the subject and helped us cover the more technical aspects of the project. Additionally, Joel, as our only truly fluent Spanish speaker spent three weeks translating conversation from Spanish to English to Spanish and back again. Shirin Belur, wth her background working for a social venture that helps underserved high school students reach college, was a natural at researching curriculum options. She also served as the unofficial team leader, keeping us focused and on the right path to complete the project on time. James Platts, with a degree in Economics and three years working on the economic policy staff in the Executive Office of the President in Washington, DC, challenged us to make sure every recommendation was fully researched and analyzed. And I, Mickayela Beatty, used my background in Operations to help pull together the overall plan for our project and presentation and also to make sure that the implementation portion of the project was realistic in terms of timing and resources.
That ends the official account of our time in Chiapas. This is the information we give interviewers or professors who ask about our IBD project. Off the record, I learned a great deal more about my teammates and our capacity for adventure (or misadventure!) through some of our non-project-related outings…
The day I left for Chiapas to begin our IBD project, I really could not think of anything I wanted to do less than get on a plane to begin three weeks of project work in a place that was not considered fully developed. I was feverish and achy and slightly delirious from the exhausting previous day I had spent moving all of my stuff to my summer residence. I blame the Nyquil I had taken for what happened next...
Upon arrival in Mexico City, without thinking I put my purse on the ground next to me and as I had been warned, it was stolen within moments. Suddenly, I had no cash, no credit cards, no cell phone and I was about to begin 3 weeks in a foreign country. I didn’t know what to do so I just stood and tried to hold back the tears that were welling up in my eyes. That’s when my team sprung into action. Shirin pulled out her laptop and began looking up credit card company phone numbers. James ran off to buy a phone card. And Joel put a comforting arm around my shoulders while he spoke in Spanish with the airport authorities about what had happened. Within minutes we had all of my credit cards cancelled, we had filed a report with the airport officials and we had managed to check in for our next flight.
Once the purse fiasco had showed me how well my team could mobilize in the face of adversity, I knew we would be ready for whatever came our way. That was good because within the next three weeks we would find ourselves in all sorts of predicaments...
After our week on the Namaste Direct donor trip came to an end, we found that the accommodations that had been set up for our next two weeks were not quite conducive to the long working days we had ahead of us. Although it was amusing to have all four of us in one room sleeping in kid sized bunk beds, the partying of our fellow hostel roommates amounted to one sleepless night and a search for new accommodations on the following day.
A connection through a friend of a friend of a friend led us to the doorstep of Chip Morris, an ex pat, artist and expert on local Mayan villages and artesania. As James wrote in our team blog - The house's five rustic bedrooms are occupied by a motley crew of passersby: a young woman in her mid-20s who has stayed more than a year, a family of traveling artisans and musicians, various other characters who would occasionally surface in the communal kitchen, and now our four-person Berkeley group. The whole house is decorated in art made by either Chip or local Mayan artists, including many fantastic mobiles and light fixtures made from old baskets and gourds. Best of all, the cost is about $4-per-person-per-night, a bargain despite the close quarters, lack of pillows, and occasional water outages. It's hard to think of a more authentic place to stay in San Cristobal.
With housing secured, we were ready for:
- A shaman ceremony, complete with attempts to emulate authentic Mayan dancing (leading to a great deal of laughing)
- All sorts of stomach issues (with the exception of Joel “iron insides” Ramirez)
- A group tasting of Mexican sushi (yep, that’s what we were thinking, too)
- Countless treks through the cobblestone streets of San Cristobal in torrential rains (complete with slips, trips and falls)
- Salsa-ing the night away (you haven’t Salsa-ed until you’ve Salsa-ed in Mexico)
- So much more!
Wow! Writing about our IBD trip reminds me about how much I enjoyed learning about the field of microfinance, how amazing it is to be able to experience life in a place like San Cristobal AND how glad I am that Joel, Shirin and James were there to share the experience with me every step of the way.
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2005 - IBD in Easter Island, Chile
