TEM Lab: Peru – Mibanco

Written by: Ermelinda Carvajal

This past weekend, Haleema and I had the opportunity to attend the Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U) Conference in Miami, FL. We attended on behalf of the commitment – the “Strengthening Women Entrepreneurship in Peru” project – made by President Cabrera at the Clinton Global Initiative Conference held earlier this year. The CGI U is an annual conference that brings together students, national youth organizations, and university officials to discuss pressing global issues. It is an excellent forum in which students from across the world can come together to share ideas about and solutions to these issues in addition to networking with peers. This year’s conference addressed five major global challenge areas: education, public health, environment and climate change, poverty alleviation, and peace and human rights. Plenary session topics included how to ignite one’s social imagination, creating social change in the US, the future of water, and the situation in Haiti. Session panelists included President Clinton, Michele Norris (host of NPR’s All Things Considered), Pharrell Williams (musician and entrepreneur), Maude Barlow (national chairperson of The Council of Canadians), Kenna (musician and executive director of Summit on the Summit), Robyn Allen (founder of Vehicle Design Summit), Sam Adelsberg (founder of LendforPeace.org), John Podesta (president and CEO of Center for American Progress), and Regina Benjamin (US Surgeon General).

We attended working sessions on education and poverty alleviation. The former addressed the use of media and digital technology in education in order to close the digital divide and reach students in remote regions across the globe. In the poverty alleviation session, we heard panelists discuss the role of social entrepreneurship as change agents in helping to end poverty. These working sessions allowed us to interact with attendees on various issues such as creating an evaluation tool to assess the impact of projects such as the Perú TEM-Lab. We discussed the challenge programs face with funders and their requests for measurable outcomes as part of their financial support. How do we find a balance between quantitative and qualitative outcomes? Which, in the end, is more important? Participants come from a diverse background so are able to offer a number of suggestions – some we may be aware of but some that are new angles we may not have thought of before.

We encourage everyone at Thunderbird who has an idea for social change to take a look at what CGI U has to offer. It is an opportunity to interact with peers and apply for funding to turn their ideas into reality.

For pictures from the event click here.

Written by: Melissa Lemus

As I approach my graduation from Thunderbird, I would be lying if I said that I knew what the future holds for me.  This uncertainty is both scary and exciting, and to get through it, I know I need to stay positive.  The same holds true for many of the women micro-entrepreneurs that I have had the pleasure of speaking with.

After holding 4 focus groups with female micro-entrepreneurs, I have gotten to learn more about the lives of these remarkable women. I have talked with them about what motivates them, their concerns, their dreams for the future and their reasons for doing what they are doing, and the truth is, we all have a lot in common.  Although these women started their businesses for different reasons (out of necessity, the ability to provide themselves with a sense of individual accomplishment, economic freedom or interest in the business), the fact is that the moment they decided to take the big step to start their businesses, they were faced with uncertainty.  Starting a business is a challenge for anyone, and this challenge becomes even greater without a solid background in business training and skills, many of which these women lack.  Yet despite the lack of training and skills, these women micro-entrepreneurs had the courage and initiative to start their businesses.
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Written by:  Tiffany Tirres

After completing four focus groups this week, I have learned a tremendous amount about women entrepreneurs in Peru.   With our focus groups, we have been diligently trying to understand each aspect of the women entrepreneurs’ businesses in order to create a mentoring model that will be successful for them.  Each different aspect of their businesses, from creating more efficient processes to building a strong clientele,  has been underlined with the same theme, “Poco a Poco” (little by little).   The majority of the women who we spoke with have been micro-entreprenuers for years, and have grown their business Poco a Poco throughout the years.  Mibanco has been a key player in helping them grow by providing slight increases in their loan amounts to help them progress.
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Written by: Ermelinda Carvajal

Before arriving in Lima, I attended a meeting with Luis, the director of the Strengthening Women Entrepreneurship in Peru Project, during which he asked my teammate, Melissa Lemus, and I what we knew about Peru. I thought back to my college courses and threw out some words that quickly came to mind: Machu Picchu, Sendero Luminoso, Fujimori, Quechua, Mario Vargas Llosa. But in the end, I said, these are just words learned from a textbook or a professor. I may have traveled and lived in Latin America but I could not tell Luis what Peru really is – nor the essence of who Peruvians are – since I had never been to the country. We have to remember that “Los latinos somos todos diferentes.” I saw my participation in this TEM-Lab as an opportunity to learn first hand what Peru is all about. It was with this mind set that I arrived in Lima on March 20^th to try to make a difference and add value to a project that was created to help thousands of Peruvian women become successful businesswomen. We had a work plan detailing our objectives and the strategy to achieve them. However, what I soon realized was that our project on paper did not necessarily equal our project in reality.
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Written by: Melissa Lemus

Wow – these first two weeks have flown by! It’s crazy to think that we have only two and a half weeks left in Peru to wrap up the project; but we are continuing to plow through the multiple layers of this project. The great thing about being in Peru is that not only are we working on a project that has the potential to have a longstanding impact for these women micro-entrepreneurs, but we are also getting an awesome opportunity to familiarize ourselves with this beautiful country.

Each of us has had unique experiences during our time in Peru. While some have traveled to the Peruvian Amazon, some of us have stayed around Lima to discover the areas nearby. Over Semana Santa, I joined my friend from college and her friends at a beach an hour from Lima. Although I had assumed we would be staying at the beach the entire weekend, my friend had different plans for me! Over the course of the four-day weekend, I was taken to Ica and Lunahuaná so that I could see and experience more of Peru.  
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Written by: Tiffany Tirres

Don’t tell Professor Bowen this, but throughout his “Competing Through People” course, I was so tired of hearing “It’s all about the people,” that I almost created a sign with that saying on it.  He constantly drilled the concepts of organizational practices into us, incessantly stressing that people can (and should) be the basis of sustainable competitive advantage in the contemporary global business environment.

Now that we’re in Peru, it’s as if his ghost is here, whispering that phrase into our ears yet again.  In the three weeks that we’ve been on the ground, we have seen these concepts present themselves over and over.   Relationship building is a key component of business not just in Peru but in most Latin American countries (and according to Finney’s “Managing Work Relationships” class, everywhere else in the world as well). In order to interact with the women entrepreneurs, the loan officers first needed to introduce us as “Amigas” of MiBanco, not just US students wanting information.
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Written by: Haleema Molberg

I first heard about Iquitos through a warning from the American Embassy regarding the March kidnapping of a Peruvian businessman and ongoing threats to Americans.  Despite this, Tiffany and I booked a flight to this landlocked city tucked into the corner bordering Colombia, Brazil, and Ecuador (accessible only via air and boat – no roads connect it with anything), as it was the key to the Amazonian Jungle of Peru.

The first leg of our trip was a mere 1.5 hour flight.  From there, we took a 3+ hour boat ride up the bright-orange water of the Amazon River and the Tahuayo, a dark, murky, insanely humid and remote tributary that doesn’t even show up on most maps.
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Written by: Ermelinda Carvajal

During the earlier part of this week, the team had the opportunity to shadow loan officers from the Mibanco branches in Villa El Salvador and Carabayllo. Having mentioned these two towns to some friends, they replied that we would now be seeing the “real Lima” instead of the “Lima of Miraflores”. I was not sure what “real” Lima meant but was looking forward to discovering it.

On Monday, Haleema and I visited the Villa El Salvador office, located south of Lima. As we waited in the lobby, we experienced a situation that many would say is quite unique for a loan officer visit. Someone had noticed a small black plastic bag containing unknown items at the end of a row of seats. It was a small bag that anyone would receive when purchasing items from a grocery store.
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Written by: Melissa Lemus

Today, the four of us embarked on our first field visit of the project in two groups.  Tiffany and I went to Carabayllo in the north part of Lima while Ermelinda and Haleema went to Villa El Salvador,  the south part of Lima. When we arrived at Mibanco’s Carabayllo branch, we met with a very welcoming branch administrator who talked about the relationship between the loan officers and the clients.  During our conversation, the branch administrator said something that stuck in my mind the rest of the day as I met clients:  Credit is a benefit, not a headache.
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