Some Musings on Work

Thankfully, as I have begun to feel increasingly settled in the village and with my host family, my comfort at work and with my projects is gradually following suit!

I had been putting off facing the most daunting of my projects for a few weeks now, but finally determined yesterday that I need to put my hand to the plow. The dreaded task is developing the advanced financial literacy curriculum I mentioned in an earlier posting. Basically, I have absolutely no interest in developing curriculum or in financial matters, which may largely stem from the fact that I feel pretty insecure about both. But as I was saying, I steeled myself yesterday, and sat down with piles and piles of resources to begin piecing out remnants of an action plan. Barbara, our recently departed intern, received a formal training in how to go about this project (and keep in mind the student handbook I’m developing must be catered to semi-literate women. So largely image and activity-based material. For someone who loves to write, this is not good news.) Unfortunately, she never got around to tackling the project, so all I have are her notebooks of material. Luckily, they are incredibly helpful and designed by an organization called Micro Opportunities, funded partially by Citi Bank’s foundation. I’m beginning to see how edifying and educational this whole process will be for me:

Right now, I’m designing market research surveys to assess the needs of our target population and the abilities of our trainers using a Participatory Rural Appraisal approach. The most exciting part about this is that my university education, it turns out, was not a total waste of time! I learned all about PRA methods in a class once upon a time, and amazingly enough, I’m about to use them. It brings tears to my eyes.

Next, I’ll write a report for our funders about my findings. And then I’ll begin to draft a curriculum prototype (one set for trainers, one set for learners) to pilot-test on a focus group, and then tweak. And then I’ll finalize the material, make it look visually ‘pretty,’ and send it off to be printed. That’s right, I am to be a published author on financial matters. This should give my dad a good laugh.

Once printed, we will have a kick-off in February for the material with representatives from the Brookings Institute. So there’s no pressure, obviously.

As you can see, things are picking up. Luckily, I’m now really jazzed about this project. The more I work here, the more enthused I am about the merits of micro finance. It really feels like an ideal, capacity-building approach to development. It’s not a hand-out, it’s not charity, and it doesn’t perpetuate a role of dependency. It instead allows people to take initiative in their own lives in the same way we in the States do every day. A woman who tends goats and works as a sugarcane picker for a corporate owned farm can become a player in the market because she has access to money she can invest in economic pursuits. Seed money that will help her make MORE money that can, in turn, allow her to utilize other micro-services: pension plans, life insurance, health insurance. It’s pretty exciting to not only work with such an organization, but live in a village that considers its services a way of life. So many entrepreneurial women in Mhaswad who seem to have good lives and make an adequate income are regular customers of the Bank. It’s very impressive.

A success story, at last!