Interviews in the campo and Fulbright seminar!

The last few weeks have been very full, first with field interviews outside of Cusco (Anta and Espinar), and then a week-long convening with other Fulbrighters in the Andean region (Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Peru). First off, after several months of planning and designing my surveys, it was really satisfying to finally get lots of in-depth interviews done. Vilma, a former participant in one of the matched savings programs here, accompanied me as a Quechua translator as well as neighborhood guide (introducing me to friends and fellow participants she knows in the communities of Anta). It was super interesting to learn about if and how people are still saving in Anta now that the matched savings program they were involved with ended (two years ago), as well as to see and experience an older, traditional way of life in an agricultural community:

This was one of the first women I interviewed myself in Anta...she spoke Spanish, although sometimes a unique hybrid of Spanish that included some Quechua. Luckily my cab driver chipped in and helped when needed. One of the things that surprised me was the cab drivers who would accompany us on our site visits -- they all spoke Quechua and were very interested in helping out with interviews! Which made it easier for Vilma and I to get more interviews done at the same time.....

Women in the communities never let an idle minute pass them by: they are always busy with their hands, either peeling vegetables or knitting or taking care of multiple children. Almost every person we approached agreed to a 45-60 minute interview, with no compensation other than a small change purse and some dark chocolate (maybe it was the dark chocolate?) Particpants were overall very willing to take the time to talk about saving and finances with us -- pretty amazing!


When we arrived in Espinar (a small rural town about 5 hours outside of Cusco), we set out to find the office for the Department of Agriculture (which runs the financial education trainings for the Juntos Conditional Cash Transfer program). Apparently the office had moved from the last time we had visited, and we were tasked with finding the new office location. Can you spot the street address from this photo? Took us awhile, too. Pretty much all the street addresses in Espinar are like this, or simply don't exist.

Financial education class in the countryside outside of Espinar. Women in this class are recipients of CCTs and are learning that they can save a portion of their money securely in the state bank (Banco de la Nacion) as well as use other financial services. Women who have positive savings in their accounts are automatically entered into a bi-monthly lottery as part of this pilot program to encourage participation--a much smaller incentive than some other matching programs, but people around here are very into lotteries.... We took an afternoon excursion to Tres Canones (although from this vista we could just see the two canyons)...there are many pre-Inca ruins in this part of the countryside as well that are worth checking out.

Vilma with one of the interviewees who we found working in the fields. Women were in the fields from early morning until late afternoon, so if we couldn't catch them at the financial education clases we searched for them in the fields. Many of the women we talked with insisted that they did not work or have jobs, despite being in the middle of hoeing the field and tending to several children. Interesting how people define "work," eh?
Right after getting back from Espinar, I headed off to Quito, Ecuador to meet with other Fulbrighers from across the region! It was lots of fun to meet and get to know the other 30-some grantees and hear about what they're researching, while doing some good sightseeing as well. The highlight of the trip was an excursion to the rainforest:
Playing in the waterfall at the end of our hike. Amazing!

On Thursday, I left the seminar to head back to Cusco in order to attend a meeting on the work of Proyecto Capital (the group I am working with to pilot savings-linked CCTs). The meeting was attended by program implementors and the President and Board of the Ford Foundation. The project was very well received, and it was very exciting to see the promise of expanding savings and financial access strategies to CCT programs all across the globe!

Now that I'm back in Cusco, I'm looking forward to analyzing all the data I've collected over the last couple weeks and writing it up into a final report. For all of my photos from the last few weeks, check out my Picasa page at: http://picasaweb.google.com/barbrosen. More to come!