Hand made goods from women in the correctional facility
Yesterday I went to visit an incarcerated Kiva client in order to do a journal update.
FAPE has a program where they give women in jail trainings and a loan for their businesses while incarcerated. Except where I went yesterday wasn’t a jail. It was a correctional facility. And that was the problem. Let me back up a bit.
About one year ago, FAPE initiated this program in the jail in Guatemala City, four of the women were Kiva clients. Training programs were given. Loans were being repaid, and the women were even putting money away in savings. The program was a success. In late Summer of 2009, two things happened: the women were moved from the jail to the correctional facility and FAPE changed directors.
The new facility, from the looks of it, appears very nice. There is a courtyard, two chapels and it appears to not be too stringent. For most, it would be better than the old jail these women were in, but for these women who had established businesses, it was not. They did not have the connections, the resources, nor the knowhow to operate in their new location. They started to become delinquent on their loans. And with the change of directors here at FAPE, the training programs were left by the wayside. In there nice, new correctional facility, they had been forgotten.
Our visit to the facility yesterday was the first time anyone from FAPE had come to see them in six months. Unlike most people who are delinquent on loans, they chastised us for not coming to visit them sooner. Of course they did not have the money to pay us now; they had not received support from us in some time. They wanted to pay back their loans, but they just couldn’t. Imagine if you had to pick up your business and move to a completely different town, and you could not use any of your former suppliers or connections to get started again. Of course they were late on their repayments.
But while complaining to us, you could also tell that our visit lifted their spirits. It animated them to get back to work on their businesses. They were happy that someone had remembered them. That they hadn’t lost all of their savings they accumulated from the previous jail. That they could share their feelings with someone who would listen.
And that’s the beauty of Kiva. If I hadn’t needed to do a journal update, who know’s when these women would have gotten a visit? Kiva is about giving people a chance to share their stories. To allow people to believe that the world cares about them when all other signs say that the world is staunchly apathetic to their lives.
