Women`s Health Center

BCDF and the Center for Regional Development at the Autonomous Popular University of the state of Puebla (UPAEP) are collaborating in order to build a Women`s Health Center in La Preciosita, a community located in the municipality of Santa Rita Tlahuapan. The goal of the Women`s Health Center is to catalyze the community to work together to ensure access to timely basic medical attention and education on disease prevention. The medical attention will consist of primary physician as well as specialists such as dentists, gynecologists, ophthalmologist, among others. Some of the topics for education services include nutrition, food preparation, organic farming, disease prevention, domestic violence and hygiene habits.

Monitoring: BCDF will monitor to ensure the community`s involvement in the construction process as well as administration of the center. We will get constant feedback from community members to ensure that they feel engaged in the entire process and are involved in critical decision making processes such as the types of medical services and educational courses offered.

Evaluation: BCDF will design an evaluation system that measures certain characteristics prior to the construction of Women`s Health Center and then after the center has been operating between one and two years.

In the short term we will measure the following results indicators:

ü Number of people attended by the Center

ü Timely access to medical attention

ü Knowledge of specific topics such as nutrition, disease prevention, etc

In the long term, we will measure the following outcome indicators:

ü Number of deaths prevented

ü Number of disabilities prevented

ü Frequency of illnesses in the community

Business training strategy

Strategy 1: Integral business training strategy

BCDF is launching an integral business training strategy in San Andrés Azumiatla, a marginalized area of the city of Puebla. BCDF is collaborating with a saving cooperative, Caja Depac Pobalna, in order to target the cooperative members who take out small loans through the cooperative. Caja Depac Poblana provides access to an array of financial services in rural marginalized communities. In this partnership, Caja Depac Poblana provides BCDF access to its members in order to detect their business skill needs, offers critical input to ensure relevance of the training, and lends BCDF its space to carry out the training sessions and coaching. BCDF and Caja Depac Poblana aim to replicate this training strategy in other marginalized communities where the savings cooperative has branches.

The main goal of the business training strategy is to strengthen the capacities of micro business owners to run and manage profitable and sustainable businesses. We believe that profitable businesses will generate economic development not only for the business owners but for the larger community through job creation. The training consists of two stages: first stage is a 50 hour class that provides basic business skills such as marketing, sales, management and accounting and the second stage is personalized business coaching to different business clusters in order to apply the skills learned in the class. We will work closely with the savings cooperative to facilitate access to credit for these businesses to grow as well as facilitate access to additional government resources available for low income business owners.

Our theory of change is that by focusing on the capacities of the business owners, we will catalyze more profitable businesses which in turn will have positive impact on the community.

Monitoring: We will monitor the participants` satisfaction with the training through constant feedback on its relevance and applicability in their businesses in order to make necessary changes in real time.

Evaluation: How will we know if we have made any impact? We are currently exploring different diagnostic formats to apply to all of the businesses that participate in our training sessions. We will apply this diagnostic prior to enrollment in the training sessions and six months to one year after the training is over. The business diagnostic will rate the business on the following aspects: management, accounting, suppliers, product quality, customer satisfaction, corporate governance, and human resources. In order to measure the impact of business strategy on the larger community, we will also document the business ‘annual revenue and number of people employed before and after the training. As businesses are more profitable, the owners will spend more money within the community and therefore generate impact on a community level. Job creation allows community members to improve their standard of living.

What does 2011 hold in store for BCDF?

We are excited to welcome 2011. It promises to be an exciting year full of challenging opportunities and meaningful service work. After six months of planning, BCDF is armed with a clear direction and an action plan to fulfill our mission and work towards realizing our vision. We aim to contribute to the breaking of cycle of poverty through integral community development: catalyzing economic development, improving community infrastructure and investing in people`s individual and collective capacities.

Our first challenge this year is to design a monitoring and evaluation system for our two main projects: construction of women`s health center in La Preciosita and integral business training strategy in Azumiatla.

What are monitoring and evaluation and why are they important?

Source: http://www.toolkitsportdevelopment.org

Monitoring is the collection, analysis and use of information from projects in order to learn from the experiences acquired, to account for resources used and results obtained and to make decisions regarding the future of the project.

Evaluation is the assessment of an ongoing or completed project in order to decide their relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact and sustainability.

Monitoring and evaluation must be done systematically and objectively in order to provide relevant information necessary for decision making.

BCDF is committed to measuring its effectiveness not by the amount of resources invested into a project but by the impact of the results obtained.

Meet some of the innovative entrepreneurs from San Andres Azumiatla!

I visited these entrepreneurs and interviewed them about their businesses. They shared their visions for the future and the challenges they currently face. Each entrepreneur has his own dream about expanding his business in order to be able to provide his family with a brighter future full of opportunities. The challenges they face are lack of basic accounting, administration and business management skills.

Doña Marisela: Grocery store

Doña Lupita: Grocery store

Doña Maria: Seamstress

Don Telesforo: Sound and lights for parties

DoñaCelsa: Butcher shop

Doña Juanita y Don Antonio: Clothing and shoe store

Women's Health Center

On friday November 26, 2010 Beck Community Development Foundation and the Center for Regional Development at the Autonomous Popular University of the state of Puebla (UPAEP) co-led a participatory workshop with community leaders in La Preciosita, Tlahuapan in order to

begin the planning process of the Women's Health Center. The workshop's main goal was to define the key objectives of the Center, define the services to be offered and outline governance structure. The workshop turned out to be a great success with enthusiastic participation of the community leaders.

The Women's Health Center has been a dream for many years since La Preciosita lacks access to health services in the community. Doña Natalia said "We have waited so long to make our dream come true. It is a real blessing to be able to participate in this meeting where we can design our dream center. Our families need health services in order to prosper and get ahead in life." Many of the women in the workshop described how they lost loved ones due to preventable illnesses and ailments left unattended due to lack of resources.

We started off the workshop identifying the main health problems facing the community. During a brainsstorming session, the participants came up with the following problems:

• Lack of adequate health infrastructure
• Lack of nutrition training
• People getting ill with preventable illnesses
• There is a lot of violence within families in the community
• The community is not organized and doesn't collaborate
• There is a higiene problem in the home and in the community
• There is a problem of food contamination from lack of higiene and from chemicals used in farming

After identifying numerous health problems, the workshop participants narrowed down two problems that are the most important to address: lack of adequate health infrastructure and lack of nutrition training. Then we put together a problem tree to identify root causes and consequences of these problems.

Then the participants defined the services that will be offered in the Women's Health Clinic. The Women's Health Clinic will have two main components: medical attention and education.

The medical attention will consist of primary physician as well as specialists such as dentists, gynecologists, opthamologist, among others. UPAEP,

Beck Foundation and the community will work together to ensure that medical services are consistent and of the highest quality. UPAEP is currently negotiating with the University's medical school to solicit their commitment to send interns on a regular basis.

The second component is education and training. The workshop participants defined the following topics as the most important to address in educational workshops:

• Nutrition
• Food preparation
• Organic farming
• Disease prevention
• Domestic violence
• Hygiene habits

We ended the workshop with a lot of enthusiasm from all of the participants who are eager to work hard to make the Women's Health Center. Don Raul, the president of the construction committee, said "I feel very inspired by the discussions today. I know that all of our hard work will pay off when we see our families get the proper attention and care they need."

What do small business owners need?

I am spending one week interviewing small business owners in an impoverished community, San Andres Azumiatla, in the city of Puebla. These business owners are members of Caja Depac Poblana, a savings cooperative, and must save a small amount on a monthly basis in order to qualify for loans. They take out out loans mainly to improve their businesses but also for unexpected expenses such as

an illness.

After interviewing many business owners, I felt inspired by their stories of survival, perseverance and business acumen. I was surprised by the commonalities in the obstacles that small business owners in poor communities face in order to grow their businesses.

Sra. Maria is a mother of four young children whose husband dedicates himself more to politics than to his family. He eventually left for the United States and didn't send any money to his family. Sra. Maria was forced to find a way to make a living in order to support her family. She opened a butcher shop that is one of the most popular in the community. She currently buys about 6 cows that she slaughters based on demand. Her customers are her neighbors who like the quality of the meat she sells them and maintain their loyalty to her in spite of competition. She currently operates her business from a small room in her house with full time hired help where she has a meat cutting machine and a refridgerator. Sra. Maria's dream is to open a first class meat shop with a glass display, a clean space that is comfortable and appealing to the customers and a diverse selection of meat products. She strives towards registering her butcher shop with the city slaughter house. She is confident that she can realize her dream if she perseveres, making small but constant strides towards her goals. The biggest obstacle she faces is access to credit with a sufficient repayment term that allows her to generate the profit necessary to repay her loan.

Sra. Anselma makes gorditas, a traditional snack from Puebla that consists of fried tortilla with cheese and salsa. As many women in the community, she was a housewife for many years until her husband lost his job and she faced serious health problems, generating an unprecedented level of expenses. In desperation she turned to community loan sharks who would lend her 200 dollars which in a matter of few months became 1,000 dollars. She eventually accrued almost 10,000 dollars worth of debt at an exhorbitant interest rate of 10% monthly. Sra. Anselma opened two gordita stands and has made a serious effort to pay off her loan. She cooks the corn the night before and then wakes up at 5am to take the corn to be ground. Then she prepares the sauces and stores everything in containers that she will need for both of her stands. After dropping off the ingredients to the stand that is operated by hired help, she drives to her stand to set the stove and tables in place. After being up on her feet for more than seven hours, she goes to the market to buy the ingredients she will need for the next day. Sra. Anselma dreams about having an enclosed stand to sell gorditas, where she can be protected from the wind and the rain, offering more quality to her customers. She wants to grow her business and open more gordita stands in the city of Puebla. Sra. Anselma needs help improving the image of her business, learning about ways to ensure higher quality gorditas and diversifying the snacks that she sells.

Sra. Anselma and Sra. Maria are two of the savy business women who want to grow their businesses yet lack the necessary tools to do so. They need support in expanding access to markets, sufficient capital to buy raw materias in bulk, and credit to invest in equipment. Most importantly they need to believe that they can make their professional goals come true.

Getting to the root of the problem

Reading all of the statistics in the last post, it is easy to get discouraged. Where do we start? How can we identify the root causes of the poverty we detected?

BCDF board members and staff decided to use a useful tool called the problem tree to help us differentiate the effects of poverty from its causes. We asked ourselves what are the root causes of poverty, what is the core problem BCDF needs to address and what are the symptoms of the problem.

After analyzing the root causes of problems in its different dimensions such as education, economy, community organization, infrastructure and the environment, we came to the conclusion that the core problem is weak community economies. The consequences of weak communities include lack of tools, skills, and educational knowledge to incorporate favorably into the workforce, insufficient household income, unemployment and underemployment, deficient basic infrastructure and environmental degradation.

So if we know what the main problem is, what should BCDF establish as its objective? Our objective should be to strengthen and energize community economies in order to contribute to breaking the cycle of poverty in marginalized community. There are various strategies we can pursue such as providing technical training for youth, promote direct access to markets, catalyzing community based development plan, and promoting favorable conditions for agriculture. Since the root causes are complex and multidimensional, there are many ways to attack them.



Based on this problem analysis, what should be BCDF´s strategic lines of work be given its mission and operational capacity? In lively discussion in our strategic planning meeting, we defined our three strategic lines:
1. Investment in human capacity,
2. Advancing community economies
3. Strengthening community infrastructure

These are the three components necessary to accomplish integral community development, breaking the vicious cycle of poverty and empowering community members to become self-reliant. We believe that through education, income generating opportunities and community spaces we can catalyze sustainable community improvement.