A Monkey, Impact Assessments, Folk Dancers, Arts & Crafts, & Much More!

We’ve been working in Puno/Juliaca for a week now at it’s been a blast. After a little delay on Thursday, we were able to do our first couple of impact assessments as well as Kiva client stories/photos for PRISMA. On our combi ride to Juliaca we saw a woman with a cute little monkey on her head which blended right in with her hair. One of the many exciting things that happen on the rides to/from Juliaca.
The community bank we worked with Friday afternoon was called “Las Poderosas”, the powerful ones. Las poderosas was comprised of eleven women, the majority of whom live and work in Juliaca. Instead of getting together at PRISMA’s office, the group meets in one of the women’s tienda about ten minutes from the office. As two o’clock rolled around the women came in one by one, making sure to be there on time to avoid a fine. The group sets their own penalties for late payments, showing up late to meetings, and a few other things.

Before the meeting started, as the women were coming in, we interviewed a few of the women for our impact assessments and Kiva stories. At first, most of the women were hesitant but the loan officer assured them that there was nothing to worry about. The woman I interviewed Friday afternoon was Esperanza. Esperanza is twenty-five and has a five year old son named Kevin. She has a husband who she lives with but is not legally married. She has been taking out microloans for almost three years now. She took her first loan out with ProMujer, but has since left and now has microloans with three other institutions. Two of the current loans she has are with Edyficar and Caja Arequipa, both of which are single loans. Her third is with PRISMA, a group loan. She is on her first loan cycle with PRISMA. Her loan with PRISMA is relatively low compared to her other two loans (PRISMA S/. 600.00, Caja Arequipa S/. 3,000.00, Edyficar S/. 7,000). She plans on staying only with PRISMA and Edyficar after her current loan cycles end. She did not like the strictness of Caja Municipal Arequipa and does not think she’ll continue with them. She is planning on joining a different community bank within PRISMA because she feels as though she is not getting the same treatment within the group as do the other members, most of which have been with the community bank since it started. Esperanza uses her loans to build and maintain the two stages she has. She rents them out to different local groups to put on performances. Her business has been a stable and reliable source of income for her family.

On the way to buy some art supplies and some things for the apartment we ran into a parade of children from different schools in Puno dancing different traditional Peruvian dance. The colors of the costumes and the energy of the kids were incredible.

We spent Saturday afternoon with the boys at the orphanage. We arrived at about three o’clock just as they were finishing their chores (cleaning and doing laundry). They were really excited to see us. It might have just been because of all the colorful paper we brought along with us. I’m not totally sure of the name of the art project we did but it we had all had a great time! We divide up the boys into three groups based on age and then divided ourselves amongst the boys to help them out. The project consisted of cutting out figures in the black construction paper and then placing different colored tissue paper over the cut out areas. They had some great designs. All of the boys enjoyed taking some time off and being a little creative. Below are some of the great works of art!

Make sure to check out the Flickr site for some more great pictures. We will continue to update pictures regularly. (http://www.flickr.com/photots/unccmi)

FELIZ DIA DEL PADRE!!! To my dad and all the great dads out there!

Untill next time!

-Pedrito