Doin' Work

Geoff Andrews – Spring 2013

Andrew, Jacqueline and Irma

Irma, Jacqueline and I

This week has been really fun. We have been doing a lot of business visits, but what I have really enjoyed is that we have been focusing a lot on the proposed projects. On Tuesday we went out to a project that I have been working on. This project belongs to a woman named Irma and she wants to expand her mini market. She has a unique situation. Her mini market is in a small town that is about 40 KM outside of Trujillo. The current store is right next to her dad’s carwash. To get here we had to take a bus ride up into the mountains to get there. When we got there we walked into her current store and it was the cleanest store that I have been in while being here in Peru. I was very impressed with her organization and wellbeing of the store. She said that lots of semi-trucks and cars stop to get their vehicles washed and while they wait they buy a lot of things from her store. Her store is in a mountain community that doesn’t have a mini market. Everyone has to travel a good 30 minutes or more to buy groceries. We feel that she has a prime opportunity to be successful. We were impressed with the state of her current business and we feel that it would be a good investment to approve Irma’s project.

               
This week we also went out to visit Juan Carlos, who has a bakery in Alta-Moche. Every time that we visit him I am becoming more and more impressed with what he is doing. He is expanding his operations little by little. He also is starting to get a real feel for the importance of financial statements and the need for them. Every single previous visit we have had to mentor him in some sort of way about his financials, except for this week. He had everything filled out and he was on top of it. I was happy to see that he finally grasped the concept and hopefully he continues to fill them out and understand them like he did this past week! He is doing well.

                
We are making progress with the plans that we are working with. We have been working with 6 individuals in preparation for funding this summer. We are working super hard with all of them. We have made significant progress in the past two weeks and we will for sure have everything done within the next couple of weeks!