And if you hate to go to school, you may grow up to be a mule

Almost exactly a month ago, I had an experience that has been so powerful and so tied to my time here and my life in general, that it’s been almost impossible for me to write about. Over the course of the month, I’ve literally started five efforts to begin this post and each time I have abandoned the blog effort because it wasn’t adequate. With each try, I attempted to tie it into one neat package and each effort ultimately left out a crucial element. For some, I conveyed the details but not the passion. For others, I conveyed my excitement but was too vague. Ironically enough, having a plethora of important and meaningful material froze my ability to write. I couldn’t even blog about the more banal, yet certainly interesting, day-to-day activities…hence the two week blog pause. In fact, the only thing that kick started my blogging was hearing that my dear Aunt Wanda was awaiting my next entry. Thanks for motivating me Wanda :)

In many, many ways, this entry is like an intricate spider’s web. Each part connects to several others and forms an ornate pattern. I have been searching for the almost invisible strand that connects the web to a more solid base. But, as a web, there are several of these strands. So, like a book in which the chapters alternate between characters who eventually meet, I will have to describe several elements of my life to convey the true meaning and impact of this other experience. To do this entry real justice, I need to step through a good deal of history and many, many reflections and realizations. I hope you’ll be patient with me because ultimately the past is what makes this present project so freaking cool.

During the winter of my sophomore year of high school, my friend Katherine and I started Literature League (then Girls’ Literature League or GLL as we fondly called it). Essentially, this program (and eventually non-profit) was a collection of book clubs for fourth and fifth grade girls from an underprivileged school (I never use the word “underserved” because, as a speed reader, it looks too much like undeserved…and who wants to help undeserving people :P ). This club was inspired by the mother-daughter book club in which Katherine and I participated. That club was a foundational and really very fun…yeah, I’m nerd. It’s something truly special when a group of women and girls grows from reading Sarah Plain and Tall to grappling with Russian literature. Also, I vividly remember our first meeting before which Mom was alternating between tears and not quite pleasant word because throwing a dinner party for twelve was just slightly out of her box. Nine years later, Mom and I (but mostly Mom if we’re being honest) could put together such a meeting with barely a second thought. There was a lot of growth during these years and book club both fostered some of that development and made that growth easier to track.

The idea behind Literature League was to, as best we could, duplicate the mother-daughter book club experience. Essentially, by exposing girls to quality literature and by giving them opportunities to share, grapple, and lead, we wanted to foster growth and maturity as well as a love for reading and learning. These ideals were certainly ideals. I continue to wrestle with whether or not my chapter every precisely achieved those goals--certainly not in totality, but probably so in little, sometimes tangential ways. Because of our winning M-D book club experience, we were able to constantly evaluate and re-assess how to improve Lit League…how to make it better, how to better connect.

However, I also saw a lot of room for growth and expansion for the program and my philosophy for such growth was essentially get every teenager with a pulse on board and start new chapters (cute huh: chapters for book clubs ;) )I won’t go into too many nitty-gritty details, but essentially this was a bad idea and basically proved the adage “quality not quantity.” I tried to grow Lit League too quickly and this resulted in a rickety edifice. While I have yet to read this book, I believe one of the fundamental tenets of Good to Great is that you must have the right people on the boat…you must have the right people on the team. You need people who share the same mission and purpose and are going to commit themselves to pursuing them. Essentially, I pulled people onto the boat of Lit League in much the same manner that a cobrador pulls unpresuming pedestrians onto his guagua. I then tried to back fill the purpose and mission aspects.

Needless to say, we did not have (for the most part) the right people on the boat/guagua/sports team/cual quiera metaphor you want. However, I was dense and I kept trying to make the people who were on the boat into the right people, which lead to frustrations, bickering, disappointment, and unfortunately some crumbled friendships. Some people say don’t do business with your friends and I came to believe that you shouldn’t do community service with your friends…hopefully with my new “business approach” this will be slightly alleviated.

I learned A LOT about leadership and about leading peers and the majority of those lessons were regrettably learned the hard way. Essentially, I had to come to grips with the fact that it didn’t matter how much I cared or tried, I can’t make people care or work in the way that I would like them to…hence the need to have the right people on the boat initially. Not only is it often futile to try to rewire people (to enjoy working with kids for example), but it’s also a bad use of resources. The person who needs “rewiring” is simply wired for something else…he/she just needs to find his/her respective boat. One of the catch phrases I had to keep repeating throughout senior year was “part of my journey is letting other people have their own journeys.”

Upon graduation, I passed Lit League off to little sister Emma who has altered the program to have more of history focus rather than a purely literary one. Additionally, she has done a far better job with Lit League than I ever did. She doesn’t enslave volunteers and she understands that the most powerful elements of the program are the relationships. While I thought I got that, I was ultimately trying to make scholars and philosophers out of the unsuspecting participants rather than connect with them on a more personal level.

I’ve always cared about education and this has expressed itself in many ways. One of the most successful ways is through tutoring, which I have been doing since the summer before junior year of high school. I’ve found that, one-on-one, I’m a strong teacher and can first connect relationally to then connect scholastically. It’s fun, challenging, and quite lucrative too!

Other than tutoring, I became a bit disillusioned with my role in education due to constantly hitting my head against the Lit League wall. The hardest, most frustrating, yet ultimately most enlightening times with respect to Lit League culminated for me in December of senior year. Then, for the remainder of the year and the close of my more intimate LL involvement, I basically kept my head down and purposed to simply finish out the spring semester as strong as I could.

Meanwhile, during spring semester in my not very econy econ class (we never even drew a supply or demand curve…eek. Nonetheless, that class had a profound impact on me), my teacher showed us a video clip about kiva (http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/uganda601/video_index.html). This program and the idea of microfinance instantly resonated with me (I’m not gonna lie, I teared up a bit). It’s a grassroots development through which people give loans—opportunities, not a handout—to help people help themselves. All that year I’d been trying to help people who didn’t want (and probably didn’t need) my help, so microfinance simply hit home. I basically said “forget edjumacation, I’m going to do the economic development thang.” Eighteen-year-old Anne was enamored with Kiva and began to openly proselytize…she was also very disappointed to learn that one must be 21 to be a Kiva fellow, though I was ultimately able to sidestep that requirement by working directly with the MFI Esperanza International (http://www.kiva.org/about/fellows-program/) (http://esperanza.org/us/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1).

And yet, I could not escape education. Fall quarter of freshman year I was sitting in Econ 1A and had the pleasure of listening to Caroline Hoxby give a guest lecture on the Economics of Education. For those of you who don’t know, Hoxby is a total badass. She’s the leader in the field and when she transferred from Harvard to Stanford, it made the Wall Street Journal—also, not only did she receive instant tenure but so did her husband who’s in sociology. Whenever my econ buddies or I have a “Hoxby sighting,” we eagerly text each other to share the joyous news. We’re basically like a bunch of preteen girls at a Hannah Montana or Jonas Brothers concert. Basically, she and her subject enraptured me. While I love being an econ major, I’m not going to deny that much of that decision was influenced by my desire to take her class--she’s away this year so I’ll have to wait until senior year. sigh.

After a less than engaging job last summer, I was determined to find something more appealing and worthwhile. My three goals: 1. Do something meaningful 2. Improve Spanish/live abroad 3. Make money. This combo seemed unlikely, but I was convinced they could come together. One of the other things my high school econ teacher emphasized is the fact that world travel does not need to be a pocket drain. Rather, you can work abroad or find creative ways to fund these trips. The main target for my funds was a Stanford grant for sophomores in the humanities, which basically funds independent research projects with the purpose of introducing and then luring students into the world of academic research.

My ultimate goal was to partner with an organization and, together, develop a project that would be worthwhile. It’s incredibly important to me that my efforts be sustainable and have real impact. One of the redeeming factors for me with respect to Lit League for me is that it’s entering it’s sixth year this December! That’s a sustained relationship with the school, with teachers, etc. Siblings are starting to come through the program and several graduates have come back to help out. Furthermore, my mom, who’s going to return to the classroom post Emma’s graduation, is strongly considering working at the same school. I so hope she does because, for me, that would make the program swing full circle in terms of impact because you’ll be hard-pressed to find an elementary school teacher who’s better than my mom. She’s awesome. That’s a longwinded way to say I didn’t want to do a research project that would ultimately sit at the bottom of a filing cabinet wasting paper and space.

By talking with Esperanza staff and past interns and by reading various research concerning microfinance, I found my research niche: the training programs Esperanza offers its loan associates! While there has been extensive research seemingly demonstrating that the presence of a training program has financial benefits that ultimately outweigh their costs, the specific elements of these programs had not been extensively studied. Also, only non-profit MFIs (Microfinance Institutes) offer training programs and if it’s financially as well as socially beneficial to include a training program, then maybe for-profit MFIs will eventually start offering them too…especially if they can include only the most crucial elements to offer the most efficient training program. This process of developing the project was much aided by freshman RA Jane (a rockstar of and RA and one of the most wonderful people I know) as well as my Stanford advisors with whom I regularly touched base to determine my next steps. Another crucial element was the Community-Based Research class I took fall quarter…the first day of class I actually confessed to wanting to move away from my education background and into microfinance. I submitted my proposal on December 1st, was awarded the grant at the end of January, and then in mid February it dawned on me: the element of microfinance that I would be studying and learning about was the training program—the crossover of microfinance and education! My best efforts to escape education had been thwarted by none other than myself! Rather than being peeved, I was delighted by this surprise cohesion, especially since I truly was interested in learning about that which I’d proposed to study.

I arrived in the DR and began my research, which took the form of structured interviews following a protocol I’d developed. It took a little while to get the hang of the interview and figure out how to not be a doormat or be too assertive. Throughout the summer I’ve struggled with figuring out whether or not my research truly can be useful or whether it’s just busywork...ultimately I think it’s got potential (I just have to compile it all). Also, I started to be a bit disillusioned with microfinance. I was seeing very few examples of what I would consider to be real development and progress. At best, it seemed the majority of the loans were just helping our clients float a bit better. And, at worst, the loans became a point of strife for the community. Esperanza follows the Grameen model of microfinance, which means we primarily offer group loans. A group of five women (occasionally there’s a man or two) form a solidarity group, which means they cross-guarantee one another. If one defaults, nobody in the group can take out another loan. Thus, if someone can’t pay at a meeting, the other group members must scrape together the costs. Sometimes a group does not exactly demonstrate solidarity and verbal fights will break out. Sometimes the loan officer ends up sounding more like the Sheriff of Nottingham rather than caring development workers I know them to be. Another problem I saw was that practically none of the business that women were starting were truly valuable beyond the fact that they employed the Esperanza associate. Quite honestly, Los Alcarrizos does not need another woman selling empenadas or ropa de paca.

There’s a line in Steinbeck’s East of Eden that basically says that when children realize their parents aren’t perfect it’s as if the gods have fallen. I went through a good deal of that this summer. While I had read about microfinance’s limitations and problems prior to my time here in the DR, I still wanted the brochure image of microfinance. I wanted the polished stories even though I knew those weren’t the reality. On my most frustrating day in the field, I was about ready to give up any hope I had in microfinance when I read Jon’s blog post for that day:

Microfinance: The Next Bubble?

That's the headline of a recent posting on Newsweek's Wealth of Nations blog. It talks about a recent study by two American economists whose primary conclusion is that while microfinance isn't hurting anybody, there isn't a lot of solid evidence that it's helping them, either.

It may surprise many of you that I don't really find these conclusions to be very troubling, even if they are spot on. And yet, I still believe that microfinance should continue to expand, that it should try to reach as many of the poor as possible, all over the world. Why? Because I don't believe that microfinance is truly about helping poor entrepreneurs escape poverty. I believe it's about helping their children escape poverty. The blunt fact is, most of these poor entrepreneurs do not have the education to become sustainably affluent. Microcredit cannot do a whole lot to help them get one, because they need to be working to pay back their loans, besides having children and a home to maintain.

What microcredit can (and does) do for the poor is provide them with the necessary stability of income to keep their children in school long enough for them to have a good enough education to give them a much higher chance of escaping poverty than they ever had themselves. I have no rigorous studies immediately on hand to prove my claim, but it is what I believe after spending a bit of time in the field and it makes a great deal of sense. If one is looking for massive improvements in the well-being of a country's poor population, one will have to wait roughly 25 years after a significant proportion of that nation's poor population had access to microcredit.

Of course, it would also help immensely if the governments of these countries would meet their poor citizens halfway by focusing relentlessly on improving both quality of education and access to it. But that's a whole different battle.


OK. I could work with that. I could be content with that mindset. And, from there I could continue to conduct my research. I started thinking more and more about what made for the most successful groups and individual businesses. And, over the course of the weeks, it became increasingly clear how the key was to have a specific plan, to have a specific purpose, to have clear and dynamic communication. Microfinance may not end economic poverty for the entrepreneur but for their children instead. Also, microfinacne it can give associates opportunities to foster dignity and dreams, which I believe distinguishes impoverished people from poor people.

Furthermore, I began to think about what falls inline with my passions because tiny colmados and clothes selling businesses were not as exciting as I had thought they would be for me. The Friday before my trip to San Pedro with the other interns, I journaled the following in the back of a book: The causes I care the most about are those that inspire people to develop dreams and goals and pursue them intentionally with the expectation that they can and will fulfill them and then develop new ones. I want to help people grasp the vision of dreams because goals are what propel us and help us improve. The richest man in the world and a poor colmado owner in the Dominican Republic both need dreams because they are the things of purpose, meaning, and dignity. My dream is to help other people realize (in both senses of the word) their dreams. THAT is what fills my heart and soul and where I think my talents lie. One of the reasons I think teachers and education are so powerful is that they can serve as this role…they can inspire dreams and teach people to think bigger. I, however, do not know if my ultimate career path is that of a teacher. Maybe I could train teachers or parents or start schools? I just feel like being purely a teacher might be a bit too limited—I’d like to have greater reach.

First of all, those thoughts reframed my intention for my research. How can we help the women develop extensive budgets as well as bimonthly, monthly, and yearly plans and goals? First of all, the women with clearer goals pay back more regularly. Furthermore, the women with clearer goals seem to communicate better with their groups, so the groups have less problems too, which is ultimately good for Esperanza’s goal of development. Furthermore, fewer group problems means the loan officers can better use their time resources because they do not have to schedule extra meetings or stay later at the normal reuniones bisemenales. The dream is the key and we want to have training programs that help the women develop their dreams and equip the women with the tools they need to achieve those goals.

Then, less than a week later, I encountered the first thing that made me think I would have a legitimate and not just sentimental reason to return to the DR…this is the experience on which the whole post hinges b.t. dubs. Though “Lucas’s school” had been on my list of intern duties since day one, I hadn’t paid much attention to it. Quite frankly the loan officer Lucas and I had not had any real interactions and I was resigning myself to the fact that I might not connect with every person in the Los Alcarrizos office…aka everyone but Lucas. Nonetheless, I continued to ask if I could go visit this school and our first several scheduled dates simply fell through. I’ve since learned to be more direct and persistent.

When I finally went to the school for the first time, I almost immediately realized what a gem it is. The elementary school started three years ago and takes place in the rundown and porous church, which Lucas pastors (unlike in the states, pastoral work is done as a volunteer sans pay). While there were only 35 kids to start, there are now approximately 70 students in a very tight space. This is a private school and it aims to serve those who the public school can’t or won’t. In addition to being mediocre at best (many teachers never collect homework and there is no such thing as failing a grade), the public schools are full and do not serve students without papers. Unlike in the states, if your local public school is full, you don’t attend one in another district—you just don’t go to school. Also, many Haitian immigrants and/or children of Haitian immigrants do not have papers, meaning they are not eligible for public education. For reference, about 40% of Los Alcarrizos’s associates are Haitian immigrants. This school aims to serve orphans, children without papers, and children who cannot attend the public schools because they are full. Those who can pay, pay a small fee to attend; however, lack of capital will not keep a child from attending. One of the problems that the school faces is that there is plenty of demand, but the space in which they operate is full as it is.

There are five teachers who serve this school, all of whom are Esperanza loan associates. All five teachers work as volunteers…these women epitomize the term “super mom” because they work as full time teachers, have their independent businesses, and are mothers and wives. And they are quality teachers. One of the thing I’ve learned in my time here is to ask deep questions and probe for examples because my conception of, say, what basic math means might be very different from what their basic math is. For example, I have a friend who’s finishing up his first of a five-year engineering program in university here. For me, first year engineering math is calculus; for him, it is factoring. Eep! All I have to say is that the teachers passed my test.

These women get it! Or, as we would say here in the DR “ella sabe.” Not only do they teach and serve at a high caliber with incredible passion and dedication, but they understand the power that teachers and school have. They get the dream piece. They get how school can change kids. One of the teachers told me about a little boy was angry, standoffish, and reluctant to participate in school at first. Eventually, the boy came around and began to embrace the school. One day at church, he came up and hugged his teacher. His mother saw this and told the teacher that her son never hugs nor lets anyone hug him. Teaching can be an incredible form of love and empowerment.

The school also offers psychological services. Lucas’s sister is a trained therapist and volunteers in the school to help the children adjust, a truly crucial element. Here, kids run wild and receive little guidance except for the occasional slap on the wrist. There is very little childhood structure…bedtimes and organized play are alien concepts. One of the more unfortunate Dominican philosophies is “if you want to do it, do it.” This might seem good at first in terms of setting goals and achieving them and such, but it’s manifested itself in terms of myopic and what I would consider unethical and selfish decisions. Infidelity runs rampant here and it’s been suggested that it’s as high as 90% (and it goes both ways), which I think reflects a general lack of trust and commitment. Can you even imagine dating or marrying someone and knowing that they are probably fooling around!?! Unfortunately, this infidelity does not just involve the two unfaithful parties because there are so many children that are born from these unstable relationships. It is not uncommon at all for one person to have several children from several different people, which means there are a lot of kids who grow up without two parents. If you want specific examples, I can share some and go on for a long time, but I’d really rather not. Furthermore, when all you see is infidelity, it makes it really hard to be anything or expect anything else. These expressions of a lack of character or unethical behavior such as the infidelity have strongly influenced my philosophies that I expressed in my last blog. It’s not that we should be people of strong character and ethics. Rather, we HAVE to be because if we aren’t, it all goes to hell in hand basket. Honestly, I think philosophies of moral relativism have developed because people are too comfortable and too safe…they do not see or have not seen what can happen if their philosophy is carried out to an extreme. My response is: hang out in the DR (or probably any developing country for that matter) and you’ll quickly change your philosophy. There are clear rights and wrongs and when we don’t do right and when we can’t be expected to do right, all sense of stability and order fall to pieces.

I went off on that tangent not to share a sob rant but to make it clear how impressive this school truly is. In addition to pursuing high quality education, the school aims to instill morals and ethics and true family values. It aims to give structure and order to otherwise chaotic childhoods. Many of the students who have entered the school, such as hug boy, come from unstable homes and are angry and unruly (and I can’t particularly blame them). But the school gives them a fresh start and shows them another way. More and more, I’m coming to believe that the first step to ending poverty is changing people’s hearts and minds. When I visited the school’s summer program, the kids were all sitting in chairs and paid attention to the teacher. They participated in the songs (in French, English, and Spanish), preformed skits, recited poems, and there was order and structure and joy. Honestly, it was like a miracle and I was semi-convinced that the children had been drugged. Joke, joke. I in no way believe that there was any drugging of children to impress the young rubia.

And yet the school is not stagnant. The teachers have big, big dreams. Aracelis showed me a large dirt pile next to the church and had me close my eyes. She then talked me through the three-story building that she sees…how it’s made of block. How the first two levels will be for classrooms. How they’ll be able to serve 200 children. How the top floor will house a library. How there will be a community room for classes for community members.

I then learned that the construction plans have been drawn up for this building, that the foundation has been poured, that the community has rallied around the school and there are volunteers to aid the construction, and how it will only take about 20 days to build because block (the ideal building material actually) goes really quickly. Basically, the only thing stopping the construction of the school is a lack of funds to purchase the materials…which sum to a whopping 70K USD.


Why am I deeply committed to this school you might ask?
1. Education, dreams, and character are the key to economic and personal development
2. Just a week before I saw the school I journaled about how my skills and passions lie in helping other people realize their dreams and passions…so this project is a total no-brainer
3. I really like the idea of starting schools in developing countries. But more than that, I like the idea of helping people who are already doing great things. These teachers and this school have done a lot with practically zero resources. Because they’ve done so much with so little, they are the kind of people and projects that I think are deserving of more resources, because they understand value and will use those resources wisely. Right now the boat has the right people on it. I could try to start a school from scratch but there is a statistically insignificant probability of me being able to find a team with the same initiative and deep commitment as these women and their community.

I aim to help the school raise these funds. Esperanza has agreed to let us earmark donations for the school (MahanaimProject--Los ALcarrizos School) through their system so donors can receive tax-deductible receipts (http://partners.guidestar.org/controller/searchResults.gs?action_donateReport=1&partner=networkforgood&ein=91-1585511).

Now, when I give me spiel about the school in the future, I won’t give the longwinded, eight-page, spider web dissertation. I’ll be way, way, way more direct and to the point. Nonetheless, I’ve at least found it personally beneficial to get down all the overlaps because, quite frankly, they blow me away.

This school is one way for me to apply my passions and contribute to true development. I aim to dedicate to my life to such causes, though I'm currently unclear on the specific application or trajectory. My friend David and semi-jokingly brainstormed the idea of starting American schools abroad, charging normal US tution, and using the profits to start new schools--academic social entrepreneurship!?!

If you’ve stuck with me, thank you and I hope you enjoyed it. It’s my heart :)

All my lovin’,
Anne