Working together on
microfinance and microinsurance
microfinance and microinsurance
KBC employees Noëlla Wouters and Olivier Felique were both looking for a new challenge. And they found it at BRS. There they were prepared by Cera’s Cooperative Enterprise team to give training as a volunteer on the subject of good governance for cooperatives. Their first assignment brought Noëlla and Olivier to Ciderural in Lima (Peru). Trees Vandenbulcke of Cera and Patricia Hollinger of the BRS Institute supported them.
Olivier: Ciderural is an umbrella organisation of fifteen savings and credit cooperatives that offer microfinancing in Peru’s poorest rural regions. The umbrella itself is also a cooperative. Through SOS Faim, BRS has been working with Ciderural for many years now.
Noëlla: Our training focused on representative staff members of the member cooperatives, who in turn pass on this training within their own organisation. So a train-the-trainer workshop in other words. This will benefit the cooperatives’ customers in the long term, because they will of course benefit from a well-managed organisation.
Olivier: It was great meeting those customers as well. We talked to a woman selling chicken meat and a woman running a small restaurant. For years both have been members of Santa Rosa, one of the cooperatives affiliated with Ciderural. These women owe their business and income to microcredits. Without “their” cooperative, they would never have had access to the financial market.
Noëlla: Strong cooperatives are the road to a better life for them. This is why BRS is focusing on training courses on good and strong governance.
Olivier: Specifically, we first had the participants perform exercises themselves during this training. We then looked into how they were guided. This taught them how to guide course participants in self-reflection. Because that’s the approach we’re going for: autodiagnóstico - self-diagnosis.
Noëlla: We also looked more closely at difficult situations you might encounter during training. What if directors feel they need no further training? Or if their vision for the future is not realistic? Together we looked for possible solutions.
Olivier: The participants in the training course were extremely motivated. And full of “el cooperativismo”. Pedro Pariona Meza, for example, dreams of changing the country from within through the cooperative movement. And to make that happen, he wants to learn as much as possible. That hunger for knowledge and that passion motivated me enormously.
Noella: Dalila Morales Quintana’s passion also touched me. She only very recently started a cooperative that focuses mainly on women. This is very special because women in Peru generally do not get credit without their husband’s signature. In this way, Dalila is joining the fight against family violence. When women become economically stronger and independent, they escape more easily from under the yoke of their husband.
Olivier: Pedro, Dalila and the other course participants are now organising this training themselves within their own cooperative. Together with Walter Yalle, the training manager at Ciderural, we are following this up from here.
Noëlla: All in all, this experience was really ground-breaking for me. Completely outside my comfort zone, but so enriching!
Olivier: It was intense and hard work. But the passion of the group gave me so much energy. A real re-boost! So I am very happy to be preparing for the next assignment.
