maggie in the mountains

Dear DHF Family,
Back in the Andes for another round of exploration on my annual trip to our microcredit plus site here in Cajamarca Peru. The smell of dust and mountain air remains the same after five years since I once lived here…the familiar sound of horns honking and colorful campesina women walking the streets with plants on their backs and children at their breasts. We are surrounded by a sea of green mountains that engulf the “caja” (box) that is this town of Cajamarca sitting high in the Northern Andes.

It is always wonderful to get back to the field. I think at heart I have always felt akin to program field work, as this is how the DHF roots began when I had the awesome chance to work with the humble people of this place back in 2004 as a pilot project. I remember the pulse of everything close to my heart as I see the faces of women who are grateful to us for giving them opportunities on the streets with their children. I can feel the excitement of women as our 2010 entrepreneurial trainings are set to begin in the new and improved Hope House women’s development center. DiscoverHope and Nora are deeply loved in this community and that makes my heart soar, especially thinking back to days in 2004 when I sat in an old beat up velour red chair someone gave to me for my simple apartment…reading about the power of creating what we desire and wondering why I had given up my life in San Diego and what the heck I was doing in the mountains of Cajamarca, doubting. Those journeys always show us the way and what is meant by their existence in our lives…I am learning little by little to be patient as they show the path.

And now, years later, DHF is supported by more than 30 volunteers. The team of people that lift the work daily continues to amaze me, in the US and Peru. I attribute it to all of the amazing souls who are attracted to DHF feeling our utmost value…that we all deserve to wake up each day and give our greatest to the world via our passions. When we do this, we shine, individually and collectively. We hope this transfers into our work and all those that work with us. The greatness of all this I am breathing in today in the crisp mountain air, and simply Grateful.

I arrived to Caja yesterday after a 20 hour journey and an all nighter at the Lima airport. Nora picked me up graciously at 6:30am from the airport and brought me to her home. Nora is now married to her Peruvian love, Hugo and they are generously hosting me for the week I am here; they live in an amazing campo (countryside) home that belongs to Hugo´s family. I love the picture here of the trek with my suitcase full o goodies …you can see the house in the distance. Eventually two small children under 8 years old came down the long path to greet us with a wheel barrow and to push my luggage up the hill! The giving of people here has always warmed my heart and the willingness to do things simply because they want to give what they can to you.

Our work schedule is jam packed with newness. Nora begins her third year in the field with DHF and when we have moments to ourselves, we are building out her program goals for the year and how the DHF team can support those program goals on the US side. We established a relationship with a new microcredit partner (the folks who help dole out our microcredit money here in Cajamarca). MULTICREDIT, an NGO of Peru and a local agency who provides microcredit to for small business, is our new partner for this side of our work. We met with them all morning and they are incredible. The level of integrity, work quality, and professionalism is absolutely exciting for us as we grow up as an organization. We started brokering a contract with MUTLICREDIT back in the early fall as we sought to find partnership with an organization that could grow our microcredit programming into sustainability with their skills, connections, ideas, etc. Today I met with Oswaldo, the Founder, and Elizabeth the promotora (bank officer). We had an awesome discussion around the quality of the microcredit process and the importance of letting women direct the formation of their village banks so that the ownership and responsibility is engrained in the system of microlending. We opened our first new banks of 2010 in February (Las Triunfadoras and Las Progresistas) and we are set to dole out 100 new loans this year. Exciting stuff! We will spend much of the rest of this week with MULTICREDIT and making sure all expectations about process, reporting, etc are understood. This is going to be an incredible year for DHF.

Nora is back at leading the helm for our second goal of microcredit plus, which is to provide women with entrepreneurial training after they receive their loans. All trainings are based on what women say they want to compliment their lives as entrepreneurs, mothers and women. Nora is beginning to meet with all the new banks to assess their class desires, and setting up the monthly training schedule for March based on what our older clients asked for. We expect to do more than 300 trainings this year for women. If you are in Austin and want to come join us at our first event of the year, Spring Into Hope, our entire goal of the evening is to raise support for 300 classes at $25 a class at HopeHouse. See the details at www.springintohope.eventbrite.com.

As you might have read, we moved into the new HopeHouse development center. Some folks have asked me WHY we moved from our old location? Essentially, we found an incredible space with much more space for less money. We developed a partnership with local St. Vincent de Paul sisters who opened their doors to much of their unused space, including a computer room (picture to the left), a sewing machine room, an auditorium, classroom, childcare room etc. The space is clean, light, and gorgeous. Another new great beginning for our women.

It will be an exciting week filled with meetings, field work with banks and women, HopeHouse activities, and 2010 programming. I will write as much as I can while I am here. So many good thought crossing my mind as we move into 2010 and a year of exciting work for DHF: site vetting in Mexico for our 2nd site, anywhere from 2 to 7 interns who will be working at our Peru site this summer, launching our new website and branding soon…we are growing up! In the meantime, know I am breathing your life into all that we are doing here and into the future. We are the collective of every person who is connected to us and one thing I know, is I never want to lose that.

Sending love from the Andes,
Maggie

Hope House Set-Up

Welcome!
So last week I was visiting new village bank groups in the process of forming and this week I have done none of that. Most of DHF Hope House things were moved in at the end of the week and this week has been set-up time, which unfortunately isn't as interesting to write about as new village banks. This year Hope House is located in a shared space, a beautiful educational and health complex that is run by a small group of nuns. We are really so fortunate to have so many resources at our fingertips; computer room, sewing machine room, and an oven, just to name a few. I am in the process of creating our first monthly class schedule for March and all of our returning teachers have been impressed with the new space. Classes start March 8, so around that date there will be more stories and photos of what Hope House looks like with an active group of women learning new skills. As for now, it is a tidy space that is just waiting to be used.

Paz ~ Nora

Get your Complementary Tix to Spring Into Hope, March 24 7-9pm

Join us for Spring Into Hope on March 24, from 7-9pm at Mercury Hall near downtown Austin! Come enjoy complementary food and drinks, including wine from event sponsor Winery on the Gruene, music by Noelle Hampton, and plenty of parking for all. We'll be creating magic in the green of the Spring!

Please click on our Eventbrite link here to confirm your attendance or visit www.lendhope.org

So Grateful for all of you,
Maggie

New Businesses that want to Bloom

Yesterday Elizabeth and I went out to visit 2 groups of women that are in the processing of forming a village bank. I want to give you a little taste of what some possible future businesses forming new village banks look like:

One woman sells beauty products door to door out of a catalog.
Another woman milks cows and sells the milk, while also raising other small animals for sale at the market.
A third woman sells skewers of chicken feet in the afternoons in front of her house.

2010 Start!

Yes, DHF in Cajamarca is off and running, sorry for the week absence. Between then and now was Carnaval, crazy water and paint fights that keep normal folks from doing normal things. As soon as Carnaval ended I went out with our new village bank promotora, Elizabeth, to visit possible new village banks. It felt great to be out in the field again, like coming home. Granted, we are forming new banks with new women this year, but the common thread of poverty and hope are evident among the women we talked to. DHF Hope House is coming alive as boxes and sewing machines were taken out of storage this week and have made their way to their new home.

Stay tuned as things unravel and transform in the next week or two!

Paz ~ Nora

Married and Back in Cajamarca!

So the past month or so has been anything but work or microcredit. On January 2 I married my Peruvian soulmate and left for a backpacking honeymoon trip throughout southern Peru and Bolivia. It was a whirlwind of family, joy, excitement for traveling new mountain roads and experiencing a whole new part of South America. We are safely home, bringing a backpack of dirty clothes and wonderful memories. As I return home to DiscoverHope and microcredit and village banking, I invite you all to join me on the journey in this new year of creating positive change in the lives of Peruvian women.

Posted here is a glimpse of our Peruvian wedding celebration, a bit different than the normal U.S. wedding, but then again everything in Peru is a little different than back home.

Paz ~ Nora

Join us for a Microcredit Panel Discussion in Austin

Dear DHF Family,
Never fear...Nora Bedard will be returning in two weeks to Cajamarca to resume her full time duty as Program Manager for the DiscoverHope Fund (congratulations to her for her marriage on Jan 4!). We have a lot of exciting program movement upcoming this year so stay tuned for more colorful stories from the field. In the meantime, join us in Austin if you can...

Central Texans striving to lift the Base of the Pyramid!

Join Net Impact Austin for a speaker panel discussing a convergence of microfinance, creative philanthropy and business opportunities that are lifting people in developing countries out of poverty. There are over 4 billion people around the world who live on less than $2.00 a day. They are what’s known as the Base of the Pyramid (or BoP). Come and learn how people based right here in Central Texas are working to create funding mechanisms and education programs to help these our global neighbors to build communities that thrive with meaningful, sustainable work, higher household incomes and improved social and environmental conditions.
Please click to RSVP

The panelists include:
Maggie Miller is Founder and Executive Director of DiscoverHope Fund (DHF), an international development nonprofit promoting abundance for women and their families living in economic poverty through microcredit and sustainable support systems. Maggie spent nearly two years living in mountains of Cajamarca Peru developing and implementing the microcredit pilot project that evolved into DHF, a nonprofit that Maggie registered in 2006 with the state of TX and with the IRS to create a 501c3 public charity. In 2006, she was chosen as a research fellow for FINCA and FriendshipBridge to conduct grassroots research on poverty and the power of microcredit in Panajachel, Guatemala. Maggie directs the day-to-day management and growth of DHF from headquarters in Austin TX and travels back to Peru annually to work with DHF’s field-based Peru Program Manager. Prior to her international work, Maggie enjoyed six years in nonprofit management in San Diego as a Program Director, focusing on program design and evaluation for youth development programs for peace after completing her MA in Communication. Maggie received her Certificate in Nonprofit Leadership and Management from Texas Association of Nonprofit Organizations in 2009

Norma Van Horn is the Program Director of A Glimmer of Hope. She works closely with the Addis Ababa, Ethiopia country office to manage and coordinate A Glimmer of Hope’s roughly 750 construction projects and $2 million microfinance portfolio. I have been at A Glimmer of Hope – my dream job – since mid-2008. For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by Africa. The sunsets, the animals, the music, the culture and the primal roots of humanity captured me from a very early age. In 2004, my husband and I celebrated our second anniversary with a two week safari in Africa which was everything I had hoped it would be and more. What I wasn’t prepared for was the poverty. My career as a technology product manager and graduate student had taken me all over the world – Asia, Russia, Eastern and Western Europe – but nothing prepares you for Africa. We returned compelled to do something about the extreme poverty we had seen and started a small business for the sole purpose of raising money for microfinance organizations. Shortly after that we started a family and I chose to be a stay-at-home mom for one precious, irreplaceable year. Giving that up to join A Glimmer of Hope was a tough decision but it is incredibly meaningful to know that my efforts are helping to make a constructive difference in the lives of remote, rural Ethiopians every day and I count my lucky stars that I am able to do this work.

Steve Wanta is passionate about microfinance and other business solutions that are improving the lives of the poor. He was hired by Whole Planet Foundation in March 2006 as the Field Program Manager to support the creation of new MFIs in Guatemala and Costa Rica in partnership with Grameen Trust. Only months prior to beginning with the Foundation, Steve had completed his two years of service in the Peace Corps working with rural Guatemalan farmers implementing business solutions in an effort to improve their livelihoods. His development experience complimented by his previous work in business development at Dell Computer Corporation have allowed Steve to bridge between people living in poverty and leaders looking to understand the challenges of the poor. Now as the Executive Program Director, Steve is responsible for overseeing and expanding Whole Planet Foundation’s portfolio of microfinance projects around the world. Steve is proud to be an owner of the Green Bay Packers, avid rugby player, and fluent Spanish speaker.

Moderated by Scott Collier. Scott has worked in venture capital and private equity since 1991 and has been a student of microfinance in the developing world for most of that time. He is currently a Managing Director of Austin-based Triton Ventures and also advises private and publicly-traded companies on matters of capital formation, corporate development and strategy. Prior to Triton he served as Vice President of Capital Southwest Corporation, a publicly-traded venture capital firm with assets under management of over $500M.. Scott has had board responsibility for numerous venture backed companies and currently serves on the board of the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Central Texas and the Austin Technology Council and on the advisory board of PeopleFund. He is currenly part of a leadership team forming Slow Money Alliance Austin, serves on the advisory board for Austin-area Community Development Financial Institution PeopleFund, and chairs the steering committee for the 2010 Dell Social Innovation Competition. He also created Rockroom Wine Cooperative, a producer of premium wines that invests all profits from wine sales in microloans in the developing world through microfinance partner Kiva.org.
Please click to RSVP

http://www.netimpactaustin.org/event/microfinance-texas-raising-bop