Celebrating Mother's Day

This may well have been my busiest week with the women. I didn't even have time to recover from the Feria/Fair on Wed. when we had to finish preparations for a Mother's Day activity on Friday afternoon. Much like the big activity that was planned in January where all 200 loan participants were invited, it was a chaotic success. The microphone didn't work, we ran out of chairs, the CD player wouldn't read the CD's and we started almost an hour late. The good news is that we had guests from a different NGO join us to talk about business basics, we recognized the village banks that are timely on their loan payments and other women that have been helpful and crucial to planning DHF activities, and there was some good dancing. We honored the timely and organized banks with small gifts (clay pots, cups, certificates) and I think this really showed the rest of the women how important their success is to us as NGO's. It also served as an incentive to encourage the other banks to follow in their footsteps. The afternoon ended with a special dance - together with my co-workers we dressed up in typical Carnival costumes and preformed a Carnival dance, which ended with participation from our audience. It was great fun, my only regret is not having a good picture to document this part of the afternoon. Next time, and next time we will have a working microphone and enough chairs too.

Receiving her pot and certificate for being in first place as far as loan repayment is concerned compared to the other village banks. Co-workers Soledad and Jorge also pictured.
Recognizing the hard work of some of the women that have helped plan the event and other events.
Dance troop making everyone smile.