Program Update: Microfinance Brigades

By Danny De Valdenebro, 05/14/2010

Global Brigades has become a permanent fixture in certain communities in Honduras. This has led to amazing relationships, and great stories of cooperation. But it’s also a sign that the problems aren’t going away. The diseases and the lack of healthy infrastructure have inspired the great brigade programs which have relieved so much suffering. But this is symptomatic relief. With accumulation of funds made possible by a successful community bank, the root issues can be addressed. A community can build the health centers and build their own irrigation systems. The dignity achieved by a community that has taken its development into its own hands is in itself an immeasurable effect.

With this mantra in mind the pilot season of Microfinance brigades was met with great expectations. Through months of determination and due diligence, Merrilee Chapin was able to build from the ground up, a program which lived up to the aforementioned ideal. DePaul and LSE arrived to communities that had started their dream but needed that spark to get the community behind it. The students more than fulfilled that need. The hands which I was expecting to have to hold through the process were busy. Students were making plans for borrowers and educating community members on the caja rural. By the time it was all said and done their work had born fruit. The community banks had a several fold increase in funds available for lending (specifically designated for projects that had been proposed to them by borrowers), a surge in savings and membership, and had begun to educate a community where financial planning is a culturally foreign concept.

At the end of several days of community visits, students were speaking not of coming back to the comforts of home, but of how they could start planning for the next brigade. The relationship between the sweat of communities and the vision of universities is one for the long haul, and the implementation of a proper financial system into a community which lives each day as it comes is not something that happens in a week. But as GB works year round and students arrive to inject life into these cajas, the progress made is tangible and incredibly rewarding on both sides.

If this makes as much sense to you as it does to me (if it doesn’t, bring it my friend), then get involved, and email me.

Danny De Valdenebro is the incoming Director of Microfinance Brigades, enjoys jazz and old people, and is currently the tallest Colombian in the country of Honduras.

May 12, 2010 5:04:50 AM | Program Update: Microfinance Brigades