Challenges & Opportunities

“If you make the effort, you’ll find the results”

“You have to want it so badly that you will cry for it”

When I landed in DR in January, 2012, I wanted to work with SOLIDARIDAD, DR’s CCT program. I did not dare to visit the office at the beginning, but with that goal in mind, I started preparing myself with the savings groups methodology. In May, 2013, with the finalization of my Masters paper, I was transferred to Fundación Capital. With the aspiration to work with PROSOLI, I kept working and meeting with a group of hand picked facilitators to have us prepared. We successfully finished our savings groups led financial inclusion pilot and in a few months, managed to get PROSOLI interested in trying out a pilot with us.

Challenges have been enormous: It has been 2 months since we started the pilot and we have 5 months left with us to produce tangible results. So far, the result is almost insignificant. With the bigger size of groups, I realized I need a new strategy, a new type of leadership to help people stay motivated and also skills to make everyone feel part of the team willing to collaborate with.

Yet, we are not left without support: PROSOLI will have the pilot included in their operating plan, and we have some brilliant and motivated facilitators. Furthermore, strange enough, many unexpected but rather positive things happened: Socrates went to Mexico with us, Suriel with her staff went to Korea with my coordination and finally Hector and Ezequiel will be going to Chile with invitation from Fundacion Capital, all with the permission of Vice-president. These key figures for the success of pilot will not and cannot be hostile to us, at least.

The more our work advances, I see the bigger opportunities are unfolded. There are organizations eager to finance to produce changes (WB, IDB principally), but relatively few has contributed to it. What should be done? We need to present a convincing evidence that shows what we do is plausible and is an effective and efficient way of financial inclusion and is a great way of building people’s self esteem which can empower them to move out of poverty on their own.

As God indicated above, what I need to do is to make consistent efforts, to want it so badly that I will cry for it. My goal is to build 50,000 groups with 1 million members in the DR for the next two years. But for now, my goal is forming 200 SGs with 5,000 members. "Though your beginning will seem humble, so prosperous will your future be."