Financial Education Workshop

This blog may be called Genesis Construction, but those who have worked with us know we try and go way beyond just construction and try and meet the needs of the community where they are. If we just build houses to satisfy our consciences but ignore other with which we could easily help, then are we really loving the community. It is sort of our motto scripture but Matthew 25, doesnt simply talk about the foreigner that was given a room, but also about the hungry who were given bread and the naked who were given clothes etc.

Anyways this all goes to say that what we are really about here is serving our community, and we were able to realize that mission in a special way this Sunday by facilitating a financial education workshop for Jazmin. There can be no doubt that the people there are poor, but it seems to us that some live worse than they need to.

Like my grandfather who tells the same jokes over and over again, many may be familiar with this story but it is highly illustrative of a common problem in Jazmin. When Maximo asked a woman, ¨does your famiy ever go hungry?¨ she replied ¨Yes, truth be told, at the end of the month, sometimes we go with out food.¨  ¨Why the end of the month?¨ asked Maximo. ¨Well, we have to pay the electricity bill and the telephone bill, and the payment for our home theater system…¨

Sometimes it is the poor financial choices that really hurt families, so it seemed to us that as a problematic area, we should try to somehow resolve it. (Of course when I say ¨we¨ I mean other smarter, more capable people than myself, I have been merely a fly on the wall for this undertaking, although I did draw up the initial budget for the snack ) Andy Valenciano (I feel like I can just say Andy by now) organized a financial education workshop, through some contacts with Habitat for Hummanity, and on Sunday we went up to the local church Lluvia Tardía to carry it out. Many thanks to Luis (who you could say was the leader of the worskshop), Andy, Marianne, the wonderful girls from City (I´ll post them names when I can remember them) and Lluvia Tardía!

Although at the beginning we were nervous when only two women shopped up at the originally slated time, eventually we actually went over our maximim capacit and had about 18 people from Jazmin at the workshop! It was great! Now we can`t really reasure the efficacy of this workshop now, but I feel confident that this was an important step in nuturing the slum and giving the people the means to liberate themselves.

Here are some pictures so you can see what it was like (it was fun!)

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