promised report

i have just finished the final of my last report. i thought it was interesting when i read through it this last time and realized how little it actually says. haha. its amazing what you can do with five pages of nothing when ‘nothing’ says something. nuf with the play on werds. here we go

Reporting Assignment: Four Relationships – God, Self, Others & Environment.

This report is an examination of the holistic development and learning that has taken place in the personal lives of clients of Esperanza International in the Los Alcarrizos area. The conclusions drawn here are in no way conclusive as they are drawn from conversations with only five different clients and a smattering of other small influences.
In these cursory findings, I have found the people of La Lechería to be holistically impacted by Esperanza in very limited ways. The people in all of the communities I have interviewed (even outside of my research spectrum) have exhibited strong community ties that exist naturally and outside of Esperanza. When it has come to Esperanza’s principles of solidarity and faith-based values, I have seen very little actual impact and learning. This is not to say that the people don’t value the services of Esperanza. They do, or they would not continue to attend and submit to the process that it takes to receive loans from Esperanza. I have also found that people are very kind with their words towards Esperanza and what they have done for them, but it has been difficult to pinpoint in just what ways the people have actually been impacted or learned about God, themselves, others or creation and what actual differences have occurred in their lives as a direct result of their participation in Esperanza.
Teresa, a client of one year who has taken four loans says, “Esperanza brought me out of a very difficult situation.” Yet when I asked what it was like before, she gave me the example, “Now I don’t have to go to my husband to ask him for 100 pesos or whatever.” I pressed to get her to qualify what had changed by asking if she was able to still have all of these things that are in her house before such as a car, a blender, and a stereo, she simply said “sí.” In a later conversation, she revealed that her husband had bought those things, but as in many cases the loan is nominally made to the client but the client’s intentions are more as a help to the whole household, it would seem that the mere presence of those objects in her house is indicative of some excess capital in the household (or money spent badly). It seems that the most important thing to her that she has gained from Esperanza was her own little bit of independence and empowerment through having her own income and contribution to the household. While she couldn’t give any relevant answers to anything she has learned about God, herself, others, or creation, it is obvious in the value of her independence that she has become aware that she can do something with her time and talents to make money as well, as she expressed in one of our interviews. The “can” is crucial here because I believe it is similar to what I have found in many other cases.
Another woman who has shown a demonstrative display of self-sufficiency and empowerment is Luciana. She is the principle leader for Esperanza of the La Lechería community, and she is also the church secretary at the church where the Esperanza groups meet. Luciana says that she brought Esperanza to her community. She tells me that a man came and found her one day working at her stand and asked her if she would like to be a part of a group that would be able to receive loans. It seems that although she did not go looking for Esperanza to help her community as one might think of such a community leader, she does take much of her time corralling the clients of the community for meetings and addressing issues between clients. It is not evident that she has learned anything pertaining to her relationships with God, others, her environment, or herself directly from her involvement from Esperanza, but it is possible, as it is difficult sometimes for people to remember what things were like in the past. Luciana does, however, say that she has learned a lot from her involvement with Esperanza. She became a Christian seven years ago, and when I asked her what she has learned in the last two years of her involvement with Esperanza, she said that she has learned to be quieter and more content with God. When asked how, Luciana replied plainly that the previous assessor had taken pains to make sure that Luciana was invited to nearly every single meeting in her community when, at first, she was a member of Esperanza but in another area. This effort and the assessor’s care for her, she said, touched her.
Self-sufficiency is especially seen in those who have risen to the level of qualifying for their own personal loans. In Esperanza, clients qualify for personal specialized loans after a series of other smaller loans that have displayed their reliability as “good payers” as they call themselves and often coupled with, as in the two following cases, their original group faulting on their loans or generally falling apart Generally, these clients speak with authority and exude a confidence much more so than other clients or non-clients. Though I cannot say whether it is this confident personality trait that has driven these clients to rise in their business dealings, or it truly has been an effect of Esperanza.
Mimosa is an example of one of these women. She has been a very hard worker all of her life trying to provide for her family for as she says of her husband, “he has his money and I have mine…I don’t need him.” Mimosa has a little grocery store and seems to be doing very well for herself as far as the standards for doing well in that community go. When asked what Mimosa defined as living well in that community meant she answered rather simply, “to have a place to sleep, food to eat, and a job.” She has all three, and is visibly more comfortable than those around her. Not only this, but her family also seems to be able to eat very well as they are all well overweight and quite content with their diet. Each time I am over there she is usually preparing some other meal that would be considered well out of the expense range for anyone else in the community (such as meatballs with real beef). Mimosa is a business woman through and through, and when she isn’t doing business, she is doing something else to support her family such as washing clothes or cleaning. I have have hardly ever seen her sit still from her tasks for more than ten minutes at a piece, given evidence by her incessant sweating from her toil. It seems that Esperanza has empowered an already hard working woman to work even harder and reap the benefits of that work. Though when I ask her questions about what she has learned from her involvement with Esperanza, she states rather emphatically that she has learned that she can only rely upon herself as she was in a bad group before and now receives loans on better fitting terms for her business personally.
Santos is a client similar to Mimosa. He also owns a little grocery store that is doing very well. He is actually currently opening another store in another neighborhood. Santos receives personal loans as a part of the little trio “group” with two other women who are doing the same (one is Mimosa). When I talked to Santos about what it is that he has learned from his experience with Esperanza pertaining to those four relationships, he could not say anything in particular, though like most Dominicans he felt obliged to give me some kind of answer anyway which is how I learned that he does not go to church but receives some evangelistic literature via post once a month and said that he goes through that with vigor when he gets them. I asked him about his reading the Bible and his prayer life and he said that he does both before he opens the shop every morning. At least he is relying upon God for his business even if we can’t attribute it to Esperanza.
Finally, we come to Celanda who lives in a house on my street. She has lived in this community for many years, but was given the opportunity by Esperanza to invest into making the front of her house a little grocery store. She too expressed a sense of self-sufficiency now but was able to attribute it directly to her experience from Esperanza. “I can handle myself with people now.” She also expressed a great deal of gratitude to Ana Maria, who was the last assessor for this area before Carmen, and attributed Ana Maria to her growth spiritually and relationally.
I have found the clients of Esperanza that I interviewed for this paper most willing to express their views and opinions which leads me to a certain degree of skepticism on how true their opinions and views really are. Of the five clients included in this paper, all five have expressed self-sufficiency as something they have learned about themselves and three out of those expressed additionally that they were now able to “handle themselves” with people now as opposed to before (meaning the confidence and ability to manage other people, groups and strangers better than before). In every case, clients seemed to have grown spiritually and relationally though some were not willing/able to recognize this effect on their lives. I believe that any visible changes or effects of Esperanza in their relationships with God, others, themselves, and the environment still lay hidden, and I was unable to extract any robust responses in any of these areas except a profound self-sufficiency (that may still be attributable to a personality strength rather than a true effect of Esperanza). However it is evident that God is at work in this community through and with Esperanza International.

well….if you actually made it this far i will tell you that my professor’s reaction was what I was hoping for. i was trying to say that there wasn’t any measurable impact of Esperanza International pertaining to the topic of the paper but that there was a lot of individual empowerment and personal confidence built up (and implicitly saying that while good…its not good that it is the only impact and that it is overloading the scales of development here). confusing enough? thanks for joining.