Meeting with 'Fighting Women'

I started this week by meeting our new village bank 'Fighting Women,' or in spanish Mujures Luchadoras. Amy and I went to meet the new loan recipients, find out a little bit more about their businesses and explain the "plus" side of microcredit to survey their interests in classes and trainings. This group did not just sit there and listen to me (as you see in this video). Much of our meeting was them chatting, asking questions, and being very vocal. I love walking into a room with energtic women. It is a battery recharge for the week. After our microcredit plus session many of the women signed up for classes this week. A couple women are in computer classes, others came to chocolate class on Tuesday, two others came to jewelry class yesterday and some more are going to learn to crochet ponchos this afternoon.

Ingrid struck me as one of the most energetic of the bunch. She is in our Tuesday section of computer classes and also came to jewelry class for the first time yesterday. She is full of questions, thirsty for knowledge and completely full of light. She must have asked me 4 or 5 different times, "Computer Class is Tuesday. Then we practice on Thursay in the computer lab? Right? I want to learn until I know everything about computers because I don't know anything." I reassured her, Yes. She comes on Tuesday to learn and again on Thursday to practice and do her homework. When she came to computer class and was all questions. According to Blake, when she made a mistake and pressed the wrong key she didn't say Oops, like the other students. She said, "What does this do?" And then she did it again, just to make sure she learned it. For the first time during jewelry class, someone took notes yesterday. Ingrid. She had her notebook writing down all the different parts of the earring. This woman is going to learn a whole lot this month, this year, and hopefully the rest of her life.