Prisma

Training with Prisma

Pedro and I had recently an absolutely thrilling meeting with our partner microfinance organization, Prisma! We are so enthusiastic about Prisma and their director in Juliaca (a town neighboring Puno). The director, Juan Farfan (he asked to be called Juan), is a small man with kind, caring eyes and a friendly and genuine manner. He was very interested in CMI-- the first thing he asked is us what our objectives were and then he talked to us for a long time trying to figure out how he could help us meet them. Even though one of our main objectives is to assist Prisma achieve some of their expansion goals and we kept trying to turn the conversation back to that purpose, he never even asked how we could help Prisma, he just wanted to know how he could help us-- what a generous and giving man.

Juan is also giving us access to basically every aspect of Prisma's MF operation, something that is very rare for a MF organization to give so freely. He was very honest and up-front about Prisma's capacity to effectively utilize CMI, which was really nice. The whole group won't go there every day, which is in all of our best interests, and it was great to know that we can find another microfinance partner (we are now talking to ProMujer and MiBanco to complement our work with Prisma).

Also, we were thrilled that Prisma agreed that 100% of the donation we give them will go directly to providing loans for the women; none of it will be used for Prisma's overhead costs.

I also really appreciated that Juan spoke directly to me during our conversation-- as a female in Peru, people usually speak to Pedro (my fellow Country Director) and not to me. His office has mostly female loan officers, and he is very respectful of them as well... in addition to the impoverished women borrowers he works with every day!

I feel so strongly that this partnership will be an amazing experience for both CMI and Prisma.

Yesterday, our whole group commuted to Juliaca, to meet at the Prisma office with their national directors of microfinance. Our training with them was so inspiring and exciting. We’ll be given the official Prisma jackets to wear during our work with them. At the training, they even asked us to drive motorcycles out to the country to work with their most rural clients! Unfortunately, we won’t be able to do that, but we were glad to hear that they trusted us so much!

We are looking forward to report more about our experience tomorrow, during our first full day of work with Prisma!

Juliana