Belize Day Three - Meeting with Parents from ACC

This morning I opened an official Peacework – Microcredit account at Scotia Bank with the ACC Vice-Principal Diane Vasquez and Anglican School Superintendent Carol Babb. I spent the rest of the afternoon discussing how to facilitate future loans and more details about the program with both Diane and Carol.

The ACC parent-teacher-student-association (it’s the PTSA in Belize too) meeting started promptly at 4:30. There were nearly 100 families attending the enrollment informational for first year high school students. The meeting was held in the 250 year old Anglican church next door to the high school. The nation claims that it is the oldest established church in the western hemisphere. Its age is evident in the crumbled exterior bricks, but the inside is extremely well maintained. There are nearly 300 seats available and the church pews were almost completely packed when I walked inside. I passed out our programs flyers and took one of the only empty seats on the front row.

I was soon introduced as a “microfinance expert” by the vice principal. I walked to the simple pulpit where Anglican ministers have evangelized for the last three centuries and began to speak. Directly behind me was a thirty foot stained glass panel depicting the crucifixion. Since I was only a 20 year old college student from Arkansas speaking to a nearly entirely black Kriol speaking audience, I felt that the image was appropriate. I introduced myself as a Peacework volunteer and spoke quickly. After about five minutes I was through and I was followed again by the vice principal. She made a second appeal to the parents to take a loan rather than not register.

The school officials concluded the meeting about thirty minutes later and I waited at the front of the church for the four or five individuals I was expecting. Instead, I was soon mobbed by over half of the audience. I began answering questions from every direction - twice in Spanish - as parents demanded whether they were approved or not, when the payments would begin and how they could secure a tuition loan for their child. One mother shouted that if there was a loan available that she would “stay past midnight,” which was followed by a shout from the emerging crowd. I ran out of the fifty applications that I had printed in the first few frantic minutes.

Since there have been over fifty applicants since yesterday, I will spend today sorting through grades and making decisions on who will receive a loan. We only have available funds for about sixteen more students. Selection will be primarily on grades and gender. We are committed to at least half of the loans being made to female students, and I expect the final proportion to be even higher. However, difficult questions remain. Should the loans should be made to families that have three, four, or five children in school? What is their ability to pay back the loan? What about single mothers, especially those with more than one child? They are more likely to repay based on responsibility, but have less income. Finally, there are many families that have multiple children at ACC. Should we provide a loan to their daughter, but not their son? Is it responsible and equitable to provide a loan for two students from the same family?

These are the questions that make microfinance difficult – especially for educational microfinance since we are selecting student recipients, but base our selection on their family status and parents, which are areas where students have little control. We have limited credit histories from which to glean information. Many families do not have past credit or even bank accounts, which is why a corollary project goal has been to establish a credit history and comfort with financial institutions for students. The final and most important question is whether we should reach the poorest and least likely families, which have the most significant need, or whether we should follow a more financially successful path and choose students from families which are more likely to repay.