Today my task was to print some Vittana business cards. To be sure, I got the business cards made. But more importantly, today I met a family who perfectly exemplifies why Vittana’s mission, our MFI partners’ work and our lenders’ dollars are just so important. If you’re needing a little inspiration or a reminder about why you became interested in Vittana’s work, this post is for you!

Here’s how my day went:

I was wandering through the streets of Huaraz, Peru (a mid-sized town in the Northern Andes) looking for a place to do some printing. Print and copy shops are a dime a dozen here, but one shop in particular caught my eye. It was bigger than the rest, and when I walked in, I was welcomed with smiles.

A young and friendly guy named Daniel was assisting me with my order. I was trying to translate the Vittana tagline “Students in school. One loan at a time” into Spanish. It wasn’t going well, so I asked for his help. He said, “Yep… that doesn’t make sense in Spanish. What are you trying to say?”

So we started talking about Vittana. I told him how I was in Peru to learn more about their education system and to understand how Vittana and our MFI partners might bring more education loans to young people who wanted to go to college.

Left to right: Daniel, Leonarde, Katie, and Herminia, discussing education in Herminia’s print shop. Huaraz, Peru.

Quite the conversation starter
Daniel’s eyes widened. His colleague (Jean Louis) who was working on an adjacent computer perked up as well. Another young man (Leonarde) who was wrestling with a jammed printer also turned to look at me. Obviously, I’d hit upon a hot topic. All three pulled up chairs close to me and the conversation began in earnest.

I started with the basics and asked them if they wanted to go to college. “Claro! (Of course!)” was their response. When I asked what job they wanted if they were able to go to college, Jean Louis (23) said he’d like to be a chef. “Me gusta comida” (I love food!) he said without a hint of sarcasm. He said that a college course to become a chef was at least three years, more if you wanted to have a specialty (like baking, international cuisine, etc.). Leonarde (also in his early twenties) said that he’s like to learn more about computers and alluded to getting a certificate in graphic design. At the print shop, they have just one employee with design experience, and he gets to do all the art work for the posters and signs they create. Leonarde would like to be able to start doing that work as well, in addition to the photocopying that is his current responsibility.

Entrepreneurism runs in the family
Daniel’s response was the most interesting. At 21, he’s already the manager of the print store. His mother, Herminia (who by this time had also pulled up a chair and joined our conversation), started the business years ago with just a single photocopier. Over the years, in the true spirit of entrepreneurism, “poco a poco” (little by little) she has built the business into what it is today – a full service print shop with four employees. Just nine months ago, she moved the business into a larger space (twice the size of most print shops) and bought a huge banner printer so now they can bring in even bigger clients. Obviously proud of her son, she says, “I’m the owner, but he (Daniel) runs the store.”

I was curious to hear about Daniel’s dreams for the future. He already had a good job, but the glimmer in his eye told me that he was hoping for something more. When I asked Daniel what he’d like to be, he said he’d like to become a lawyer. I thought, “That’s nice. A good, steady job where he’d certainly be able to make a lot of money.” But as he continued, I realized that his desire to become a lawyer went way beyond just wanting to make a good wage.

“I want to be a lawyer because then I can help businesses like my mother’s. It’s so hard to work through the system when you don’t have someone negotiating for you. If I were a lawyer, I could make sure my mother’s business was running well, and that other small businesses like this were able to make good negotiations, so they won’t be taken advantage of.”

Wow. That struck home.

More than just the money
Higher education isn’t just about a higher wage. It’s also about social justice and social equality. If the poor (or any specific sector of a population) aren’t able to go to school, they are more easily underserved, they are more easily ignored, they are more easily mistreated.

Consider the similar issue of gender equity in the United States. Before women were allowed or encouraged to go to college, their rights were hampered across the board. They made miniscule wages compared to men. They were under-represented in all important aspects of politics, academia and media. Their voice, their perspecitve and their needs were at best ignored, at worst ridiculed. Once women were able to attain higher levels of education, the whole playing field started to change. It may not be perfect yet, but gender equity is no longer a foreign concept and we’re certainly moving in the right direction. No one is telling Hillary Clinton or Oprah Winfrey or Melinda Gates to go sit in a corner and be quiet.

Daniel sees education as holding the same possibility for him. Daniel wants to become a lawyer because he sees a need in his community. He knows how hard it is to get ahead if when you have no advocate, no voice, no respect from the “powers that be”. By becoming a lawyer, he sees himself as a possible solution to some of these problems. Unfortunately, the one thing stopping Daniel from reaching his goal, is his lack of access to capital. The seven years of school needed to become a lawyer would cost Daniel 120,000 Peruvian soles ($42,000 USD). This amount of money is almost incomprehensible to Daniel, his mother and his friends at the shop.

We talked about this a bit.

Dramatic lack of access in Peru
I asked, “So, is it possible for you to get a loan?” Daniel laughed. He said, “I could go to a bank and try to get a loan for even 5,000 soles (~$1,700 USD) to start with my first years of college. However, in order to get approved I’d need a college diploma, a steady job and a house or land for collateral.”

Daniel looked at me, his eyes serious now, and said, “What 18 year old kid do you know who has all three of those things? None of course. That’s why none of us can go to college.” It’s beyond a Catch-22 — Daniel would need a college diploma to get a student loan to get a college diploma. Though Vittana wouldn’t be able to help Daniel get a $42,000 loan to become a lawyer, Vittana and its lenders definitely can fund a $1,700 loan for college.

This commentary alludes to greater social issues. If only people with diplomas and collateral can get bank loans, then really it’s only the rich who can “afford” to get even farther ahead. If you’re a young person and your parents haven’t been to college or don’t own their home, they can’t take a loan out for you. It sort of dashes your hopes before they’ve even had much time to blossom. The whole idea of going to college just seems “too big” to consider with too much seriousness when these are the types of obstacles you face.

As I got up and got ready to go, Daniel and Jean Louis said to me, “When you go to Lima to talk to the bank (EDAPROSPO), tell them if they come to Huaraz, we’ll be their first customers. We promise we’ll work very hard.”

Energized
With that, Daniel became my flesh-and-blood reason for me to get back to work, for me to try to help our MFI partners expand and suceed, for me to energetically recruit new lenders to support Vittana. His potential is so great, and the possibilities of what he can do, not just for himself and his family, but for his country and for the world, are so huge, that I can’t NOT be energized by this work. And Daniel is just one of millions of eager, smart, enthusiastic and hopeful individuals. And THAT is worth getting out of bed in the morning.

While in Ecuador, my eye was caught by news of students and professors rioting in the capital city of Quito, as well as in the other major urban centers of Guayaquil and Cuenca. After seeing this on the news for days at a time, and then after seeing hundreds of students throwing rocks at police in riot gear in the street just a few blocks from my hotel, I decided it was time to dig a little deeper into what exactly was going on.

Upon further investigation, I learned that the professors and teachers in all major cities and throughout the country were instituting huelgas (or strikes) in reaction to the Ecuadorian president’s new education policy. If I understand things correctly, the new policy requires all professors as well as all teachers to undergo a test to prove their competency. If they passed, they’d be assured their jobs. If not, they’d be given the opportunity to take further classes in order to get “up to snuff”. If teachers were unable to pass the test and unwilling or unable to complete further course work, they would be fired.

Now, from friends and acquaintances in Ecuador, I’ve heard both sides of this debate. Some feel that it’s an affront to the teachers; that they shouldn’t be made to take a test, and that they should just get on with the business of teaching the youth of Ecuador. The (very large) teacher’s organization in Ecuador (La Union National de Educadores) has obviously taken this up as their battle cry and teachers and professors are out in droves, marching in the streets and calling for a renegotiation of the policy.

On the other side of the debate, I’ve heard that many believe that a certain population of teachers and professors within Ecuador (many referred to these teachers as the “old guard” in the education system), who were not only using antiquainted teaching methods and theories, but who don’t fully understand the course material at all. Effectively, not only are there some who are poor teachers, but there are others who are actually teaching things incorrectly to their students. One Ecuadorian I met put a patriotic spin on this side of the debate: “How can our country improve if our teachers aren’t teaching our young people well? We can’t.”

As for the students rioting in the streets, some chalk this up to youthful vim and vigour. They seem to look upon the rioting as youthful mischief that kids are getting into when they have a day off of school due to the strikes. The Teachers’ Union has the opinion that the students are joining the marches and the riots because the policy is unjust and the students are standing on the side of the professors and universities. Others seem to have a darker view of things saying that so many students are proactively joining the riots because if, during the huelgas, a student was to show up for class, the students would be seen as not supporting the professors or the university. The student could be in deep trouble and have a hard time passing their classes from then on if they’re seen as disloyal to the school/teachers.

The conspiracy theories go deeper as well. I’ve also heard (though not been able to get any proof or factual information on this) that some believe that many of the “old guard” professors and teachers are in cahoots with the university administrations. After giving the university top dogs a little kick back, some teachers have been given kushy teaching spots without having to do much work, and that the reason that there is such a big backlash against taking these tests is that the professors wouldn’t be able to pass and their nice/easy job would be taken away and the administrations extra financing would dissapear. The accounting systems in universities have been notorious for their lack of transparency, and this testing of professors is supposedly the first step of many to try to bring light into this area.

The huelgas have now been going on for over a month in Ecuador. If nothing else, this is a month (on and off) of classes that the students have missed. The riots were getting progressively more violent (I saw youths as young as 14 handcuffed in the back of police trucks, and I’ve seen tear gas being shot into crowds of 80+ people) , but recent talks seem to have cooled things down for them moment.

It’s hard to know what is fact and what is fiction, but certainly this single policy issue brings to light the magnitude of grey area which young people must navigate in order to get an education in the developing world. If one is lucky enough to get through school and get into a university, then one must find a way to pay for it. And if one is lucky enough (and works hard enough) to find a way to pay for university, then one must worry about whether or not there will be classes to attend, whether or not the professors will be any good at teaching them the things they need to learn in order to “get ahead”, whether or not their administration will be transparent and bonafide, and whether or not their government will be willing to go bat to make education improvements.

The list goes on and on.

Here at Vittana, our mission statement is our engine.  It’s what gets us moving each day, keeps us emailing late into the night, and inspires many whiteboards’ worth of brainstorming.  The statement itself is pretty straightforward:  “Our mission is to bring student loans to the developing world through the power of person-to-person lending.”  But what do we mean by that?

The first answer is obvious.  Through Vittana, people like you make loans directly to motivated students in countries like Nicaragua, Peru, and Paraguay.  The students pay you back, and you then have the opportunity to re-invest in the future of another hard-working young person.  By creating an outstanding web-platform and a high-functioning network of innovative microfinance partners (MFI’s), we will directly provide student loans in countries where they simply did not exist before.  Thanks to the commitment of Vittana’s lenders, who’ve already lent more than $10,000 in just a few months, this element of our mission has gone from inspirational dream to inspirational reality.

The second element of the mission is less obvious but just as important as the first, and the key lies here: “the power of person-to-person lending.”  MFIs want to lend to students.  Students want to go to school.  But because no one has ever proven that students are worth the risk, few large banks or development agencies (where MFIs get the money they lend to their borrowers) are willing to give MFIs the money they need to make it happen.  By doing this right, we — you as lenders and Vittana as a non-profit — can prove them wrong, and that’s where person-to-person lending can really flex its power.  We can bring $1 million (give us time!) in student loans directly to the developing world, but if the success of person-to-person student lending inspires a investment ten times larger from a large bank, then we’re really bringin’ it (sorry).

Just this week, Vittana got a piece of news that will help the second element of the mission take some baby steps off of the whiteboard and into reality:  David Antonio Adorno Arriola, an 18-year old computer student from Paraguay, used the skills he learned in his short training course to find a job!