Category: Blog

Ottavio continues to send updates from Guatemala:

Today we began the first of a series Barefoot MBA basic business education courses with a group of Grameen Bank clients nearby Los Encuentros in Il Paraiso Guatemala. I, Ottavio Siani, and 3 students from the Universidad de Valle de Guatemala-Altiplano, Policarpo Chay, Josue Bocel, and Shirly Cano, arrived at 9 a.m. after searching for the small house where the Grameen bank meeting was taking place. We sat in for their biweekly micro-finance meeting, complete with the saying of the Grameen mantra. Oddly enough, in the background the radio was playing “Take Me Home Country Road” during their meeting and after we were introduced, “Fortunate Son” by Creedence Clearwater Revival came on. (Seriously.) A better song could not have been chosen.

After a brief introduction, each of the 3 students taught one of the first three Barefoot MBA subjects, saving, spending and investing, taking questions in between subjects.

After the introduction we realized that though the group understood Spanish the classes would be much more successful if they were translated into Kaqchikel, the local Mayan language. Fortunately Josue speaks fluent Kaqchikel and was able to translate, which increased the amount of participation drastically. We finished in 45 minutes and, luckily, were asked to come back for their following meeting to teach opportunity cost and cost-benefit analysis.

We have begun practicing the next two lessons and are very excited for next week.

We begin the new year with exciting news about the Barefoot MBA: UVG will teach the Barefoot MBA to a group of Grameen Bank clients starting later this month. Our partners at UVG are excited, and we are too. As they prepare to continue the Barefoot MBA’s implementation in Guatemala, we’ve posted agriculture and tourism adaptations to the Curriculum page.

Best wishes for a new year of peace, knowledge, independence, health, prosperity, and success.

It’s hard to think of a more rewarding gift than the following update from Guatemala. Just as parents smile from within as their children achieve first moments of independence – a first step, first sentence, first job – it is with great pride that we look back and see the Barefoot MBA beginning to take its first step of independence. Rather than spoil it with commentary, we include Ottavio’s e-mail, with his permission, here:

SOLOLÁ, Guatemala, December 9 – I am now at the beginning of my fourth month here in Guatemala. My Spanish has improved dramatically, which has allowed me to move around much more freely. Language is quite a powerful tool.

Finally, after much organizing, consternation, etc. (I have been wielding the phrase that you have used, don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good, like an ax) we have executed the first (saving, spending and investing) of a series of basic business education courses here at la Universidad de Valle Altiplano in Sololá. Nearly 40 people showed up and paid 10Q ($1.50) to attend the course. 34 of the 39 people were women; all owned businesses, and over half were teachers who said they were planning on bringing the lessons to their classes and homes. It really was a joy and fortunately there was a lot of interest in the rest of the lessons that the Barefoot MBA has to offer.

My biggest fear going into the day was that the lessons were going to be too easy. While I think that the lessons could have been a little harder (the next subjects are inherently more difficult), fielding a question about how saving money in a bank is useless because you can’t earn any interest reassured me that there was a need for this kind of education. After going over what the result of saving 50Q every two weeks for 10 years would be and how much interest you would earn from your savings (people were certainly shocked to see the results of this exercise) there was agreement that it was a good idea. The activities that we designed worked great (we broke into groups and proposed different scenarios and brainstormed how one should deal with them). Group participation, it seems to me, is very helpful.

Going forward, in addition to offering additional lessons on Saturdays, we are going to continue working with the Grameen Bank (the 10 or so other micro-finance organizations I met with are moving much more slowly. Processes with them are pending) in order to get a group of their clients to come to the university a few times to receive all of the lessons. We plan on using this group to help determine the effect this type of education has, if any. Hopefully we will be able to gather some anecdotal evidence that shows that the course is having a positive effect. Any advice on how to go about this would be great.

We continue to field requests, mostly by e-mail, from those interested in using the Barefoot MBA in new places. We provide whatever support we can, but often we don’t hear much in return. We’re thrilled, then, to share concrete stories of progress. Here’s one:

Ottavio, who finished his undergraduate work at Stanford in June, contacted us before heading to Guatemala for six months to work with the UVG and continue the translation and adaptation Scott started in March. UVG plans to partner with Grameen Bank for two sessions on saving and investing, one in November preceding an information session on microlending and one in December for a smaller group of Grameen Bank clients.

As the world ushers out the end of the worst economic year in recent memory, we’re more encouraged than ever about the future of the Barefoot MBA. Through partnerships with organizations with existing infrastructure and communities, the curriculum is reaching those who need it and continues to spread even without our hands-on support. We hope those who learn from the Barefoot MBA now internalize the lessons and pass them along to their own families and communities, virally enabling better business decisions — and in turn better lives.

As I leave Guatemala City early in the morning, I can’t help but think how much we accomplished in so little time. Truly, much of the credit goes to everyone at the University – they were the orchestra and I merely the conductor, perhaps even just the off-stage composer, in this symphony.

The adaptation guide, I was told, was very helpful in determining what kinds of examples to include. Still, I learned quite a bit from the questions I was asked, and am making the appropriate updates. Our hope with the adaptation guide is that it will fully replace the need for my physical presence to complete an adaptation. In fact, seeing how quickly the group worked on Wednesday, we’re nearly there. While I love seeing parts of the world often not accessible, or desirable, to most tourists, I cannot physically be in two places at once (a rate-limiting factor to the eventual spread of the curriculum).

This is not to say our work is done, or that it will slow. My to-do list is still long, both for this trip and for the project as a whole. We have yet to put the finishing touches on the final documents before we post them (hopefully in the next few weeks). We need to refine what is now only an outline of metrics we hope to use to measure how the Barefoot MBA curriculum affects businesses, their success, and the decisions made by their owners. And finally the staff at UVG will need to implement the training programs. I have full confidence that they will continue to dedicate the resources necessary, to the best of their ability, to put the Barefoot MBA into action. And should they have questions, I am only an email away. And so it is that I leave Guatemala, appreciative of the generosity of my hosts at the University, amazed at how much we have accomplished in such little time, and hopeful for the success of the curriculum, and thus the participants who will live more successful lives.

I’m up early this morning to spend the entire day visiting more businesses at some of the small towns around the lake. Though the morning light is beautiful, and our trip by boat across the lake refreshingly crisp, I’m tired from staying up reading last night.

My first visit is to San Juan La Laguna to visit Lema, an association of women who make dyes from natural sources and weave the fabric into about 33 different products. Rosalinda is explaining to me about the details of her business, the number of women who are part of the cooperative (15 work intensively, another 65 make partial contributions, and nearly all are illiterate), the range of prices for their goods (5 quetzales (USD$0.68) for a small woven hackeysack to 550 quetzales (USD$75) for a duvet), and their general margins (about 30% for direct sales, a bit less for items sold through intermediaries at markets farther from Solola). After six years of business, nearly all of which have seen year-over-year growth, Rosalinda’s comment about success is: we must always innovate (“tenemos que innovar siempre”).

My next stop is back on the eastern side of the lake at the workshop of Matea in San Antonio Palopo. Matea has been in business for 20 years, dying fibers from leaves and then spinning them into thread. She sells some of the thread to markets as far away as Mexico, and uses most of the rest to weave into fabric. Like Rosalinda in San Juan La Laguna, she makes a variety of products. However, as is somewhat typical around the lake, the designs and colors vary quite significantly from town to town all around the lake. In San Juan, the patterns were more simple and colors more subdued; here in San Antonio Palopo the colors are more vibrant and designs a bit more intricate.

Matea takes me through her workshop and shows me the different stages of making a finished product and the machines she has bought (from her father, who is a carpenter) to be able to produce the goods faster (making a scarf on a foot-powered loom takes only 1 day, whereas it takes about 4 days of work to make the same one by hand). She comments that much of this is typically a man’s work, but that she is able to do it equally well.

Matea is very proud of the fact that, though she had to leave school, she is able to earn money to send her children to school. She is a bit upset that it has become more difficult to profit from her goods in the local markets as more people have entered the textile business and more people now know the costs of production. This has forced her to look for markets farther away and to deal with intermediaries, who also cut into her profits. She would like more money to invest in thread, but says that the requirements necessary to take out a loan are too much of a burden and would require her to spend her time doing something other than producing or selling goods – time that she does not have.

I spend the rest of the day visiting other businesses including Magdalena in Santa Catarina Palopo who also sells textiles and Carmela in San Andres Semetaba who grows organic mushrooms. On my way I pass many fields, some in cultivation, such as this onion field, and others lying fallow.

The opportunities here are immense, but many of these people have been caught off-guard by the fast pace of today’s world market. A generation ago, markets changed slowly, patterns were subtle, emerged slowly, and allowed people sufficient time to adapt. Today, markets are flooded with new products daily – yesterday’s hand-made ceramic masks are replaced by inexpensive wooden snakes from China. The success of the first friend-chicken stand at the market invites 5 others the following week, no longer one more the following year. Selling at the market was a skill passed from generation to generation, the same way Maria learned to sell tortillas from her mother and now sells mangoes. However, prior generations have not passed along the skills to know what to do when competition arrives not with a whisper, but with a deafening crash. It is my hope, our hope, that the Barefoot MBA will infuse into the generational market knowledge a few ideas about how to adapt to the rapid changing of the markets.