Oh Community Banks

My latest project I’ve been working on has been community banks. A couple of weeks ago me and my fellow small business volunteers went to a weeklong training event where we brought a member of our community, our ‘socio’, to learn the concept and strategies for implementing a community bank in our towns. The basic concept of a community bank is to form a group of people within the town of people that you know and have confidence in. The members then start to contribute to a communal fund every week say 10 soles and after a month they can start taking loans from this communal fund, which will have an interest rate attached to it. It supposed to provide a quick and easy loan source (while promoting saving), that people can generate themselves and therefore keep all the interest on loans for themselves as well. That is the basic idea and then all of the specific details (brought forth by a committee of president, secretary etc.) should be spelled out clearly in the rules and regulations that each group comes up with, such as the terms of the loans, who can be a member, how much they will contribute each week and so forth.

So the socio I brought to the event was very receptive to the idea and we decided to start promoting it as soon as we got back. We decided to have a general meeting in the town hall to explain the concept to people interested and then if they can get their groups formed we could give them more one on one attention. To start the promotion we talked to the mayor and asked him to help with the location of the meeting, use of their projector, and maybe some of the cajas (the box where the money is actually held with three locks). He seemed interested in the idea as well so we started by makings some invitations with my name and signature on it and then space for the mayor’s as well. Shortly after I went back to the mayor for him to sign the invitations, but he said just go ahead and send them out the way they were. I thought it was a little strange that he didn’t want to sign it anymore but didn’t think too much into it. The next day my socio and I went out in the community to hand out the invitations and basically talked to anyone who would listen. We also had the chance to go to a meeting of all the vendors of the local market and pitch the idea. From there my socio recommended that we borrow a loud speaker and drive around the town announcing the reunion for the next day. I thought the idea was a little strange but thought why not, so I convinced my host dad to drive us around in his moto while we promoted our event.

The day of the event I went to talk to the mayor to confirm everything I had planned for my presentation. That day he decided to inform me that the projector ‘isn’t working’ conveniently so I had to scramble to find another projector all morning. Luckily my socio had contacts at a NGO a few towns over and went and got a projector from them for us to use. I figured that we were good to go after that so I prepared to go on as planned. Then we went to go get the key for the town hall about an hour before the event, where we were pleasantly informed by the guard that he had heard nothing about this event and that people had been painting in their earlier and that it wasn’t ready. Again this seems like it would have been good information to know beforehand that my mayor conveniently forgot to mention. Yet, once again my socio came through and got the keys to the Church’s meeting space right across from the town hall. So we set up and waited for the people to come. The meeting was planned for 7:00 p.m., and at said hour there were a whopping total of two people in attendance. Now I know that Peru is infamous for being late to meetings but I was still pretty worried. 7:15 a few more people come in, but still not feeling too good. Then 7:30 we start to get a steady trickle and at about 7:50 we decided to get started. The presentation went pretty well, and we even got a nice discussion going afterwards with some well targeted questions.

The next day a group informed us that they already had their members formed and that they were planning their first meeting for next week, which is all I could ask for and more. On another note, I have since learned about some differences among not only the socio I’m working with but also my host dad with the current mayor that made it clear why he became so unsupportive so fast. However, I’m hoping he can look past that for my work and realize that I’m not involved in it. But anyway, since the meeting I´ve had countless people asking me about this community banks idea and ojala it will materialize.