Workin' 9 to 5...

From all my postings, it may appear that Josh and I do nothing but go to festas, sunbathe and play with our guinea pigs. In the midst of all this, believe it or not, we do manage to fit in time to do “real” work too. Bird, you asked us what we were doing, and if we thought what we were doing was really making a difference, so I thought I’d post a little “work plan” update.

Although I initially came to Cape Verde to do Youth Development, the most important skill to have with Peace Corps is flexibility. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I’m working at the local government office and, more specifically, with the NGO Morabi. Morabi is a women's organization in Cape Verde that also provides micro credit to women (and men, if they have a woman to cosign on their loan) to start micro businesses. This can range from animal husbandry to agriculture, to making and selling baked goods and jams, to running a bar or small market. In Porto Novo, we have approximately 40 micro credit clients, most of whom are concentrated in the city.

My job is broken into several related parts. First, I work with existing micro credit clients and offer them "additional" services and trainings; for example, an introduction to marketing concepts or help with writing budgets and teaching smart accounting practices. This can also include making connections between businesses. For example in Cirio, we have a client who is a shoe maker. When I asked him how he sells his shoes, he said it was by word of mouth. He receives orders and then makes the shoes, and then when someone is heading down to the city, or to where the customer lives, they will deliver the shoe. Some ideas I am discussing with this customer is marketing – how do people find out about his product? Would it be possible to make sample shoes and display them in stores in the city? Would he be able to handle the additional orders if he were to receive them? What is his current work capacity? Other things to consider is depreciation of big ticket items – if he has 3 sewing machines, has he factored the cost to replace these when they break into his monthly budget, or does he have a separate “savings” to buy a new one when necessary? If not, this is something I can help him to understand and hopefully to plan for.

The second part of my job involves "recruiting" new micro credit clients. There are several challenges to micro credit in Cape Verde, and one of the main ones is lack of information. So my other task is to educate more people about the benefits of micro credit and micro enterprise. I’m currently designing information sessions to give to different communities about these things. Another challenge is lack of the “entrepreneurial spirit.” In America, we are saturated with the idea that opening our own business is a perfectly viable career choice; in Cape Verde, this can be a foreign concept. Part of my training sessions focus on the WHY’s of opening a small business, the HOW’s, and the WHAT’s, as in what sort of businesses are viable options in Cape Verde and how you can choose one that will work best for you.

The third part of my job is an extension of the second; once we hold information sessions to introduce people to the possibilities of entrepreneurship and micro credit, I want to run small business training courses. This “work plan” continues on to include a small business mentoring program, a summer business camp for girls and finally an after school business club, where girls from the business camp will partner with American youth (possibly through Junior Achievement) and open and run their own small business, using a micro loan from the American partner.

In addition to this, we are now starting work on planning Camp Crioula, a girls summer leadership camp that has been run on our island the past two years. This year we are looking to reach 40 girls, including 10 from the neighboring island. This will hopefully take place the last week in July.

So...yep, we do work around here, but things move slowly and the most important catalyst is language. This in particular is why my work has moved more slowly than others; not only did we move to the northern islands and have to learn a different “way” of speaking Kriolu, but I’m also in the business sector and in my work, if I can’t explain something or understand what someone is saying, it can have a real negative effect on someone else’s life. This is also the main reason that Josh and I want to stay here for an extra year; the later parts of my project, including the business camp and after school program, would be implemented next summer and school year (although there is a possibility of having a winter camp over the break).

I’m sure Josh can better explain what he is doing in his work, but in a nutshell, he’s working on several programming projects, including designing a database for storing tax information, one for helping to monitor water in our concelho, and working with me on a way to streamline the credit process for Morabi. We’re also looking at designing an island wide website with links to each concelho.

Now that we've talked about work, it's probably a good time to mention that we're leaving for training in Praia on Thursday, and then will be on VACATION visiting the islands of Sal and Boa Vista from the 21st to the 29th. Sorry, no blog updates during that period I'm afraid, but I know we'll have TONS of photos to post when we get back! The 23rd is our 2 year wedding anniversary (and Josh's mom's birthday - Happy Birthday!), and we thought what better way to celebrate than sitting on a beach doing NOTHING all day along!

Ti logu,

Dove