A Day in the Life of a Saver

This is the project that I am currently working on for both CARD and The Grameen foundation, which is a sort of sponsor with the help of Gates foundation. Anyways, my job is to help select people to interview and video in order to create a short documentary about how the savings program affects their lives. So far I have written an article for the Grameen foundation newsletter( I will put up a link when they publish it, may be a while) and I have taken organized and named photos to put in both the Day in the life of a Saver project and the internal one im doing. I have been to many places in the poor community recently and wanted to show you a few pictures. The pictures of the "buildings" are the structures that they build  in order to hold these weekly center meetings for their groups. At best they remind me of a Jesus' day stable. They are made of bamboo or tin or anything else available.  The one picture with the green room is what they call an obo which is a makeshift bank in over 300 neighborhoods. These make it easier for the leaders of the center meetings to deposit the money. However, as you can see there  is no security at all. These Obo's are given the ability to handle up to 50,000 pesos per client(About $1,100) and there are no guards, no bullet proof glass, no security at all. The place a coffee table in the room with some plastic chairs and dish out or collect money. The very thought scares me. The rest of the pictures are of the groups of women, their children, and their daily lives. It is easy to get taken away by the emotions of how poor these people are but there are so many people trying to help them it is inspiring. The fact that I get to be a part of it is amazing.