Community Classes

As many of you have probably gathered from previous posts, the Hope House is busy. There are activities everyday. Women gather, learn new skills, forget their problems, sell their products and leave empowered. But, that isn't the case with all our loan recipient women. Some of the newly formed banks are located in the countryside, a good 45 minute bus ride to the Hope House. That is 45 minutes of ride time (not including wait time), if the women are lucky enough to find space on the one busline that goes out to their community. One of our new village bank members, Tania, was telling me that she really wanted to sign up for sewing classes, but because class ends at 6pm, she would have a hard time getting a space on the bus to get back home. Tania came to bakery class last month and in order to get home, she had to squeeze on one of the last buses, while her arms dangled out the window. Not especially comfortable with two small children. She went so far as to ask her other bank members if they wanted to split the cost of a taxi to come home after sewing class, but there just weren't enough women to make the cost economical.

So what does DHF do about this? Yesterday we started our first community class, where we bring Hope House to the homes of the loan recipients. In Tania's village bank, Strength and Blessings, many of the women raise animals as their business. So we invited a Veterinarian to give some "Animal Tips", specifically about pigs, to this village bank. Attendance was great, almost all of the village bank was present. And, the women had loads of questions. We set up the proyector in a dark living room with a bedsheet as our background. My favorite quote from the afternoon was, "Well, now I am not going to buy sick pigs again." There was so much interest after our session ended that we are already planning a Cow Tips session.