Goodness gracious! I can't believe I'm already starting my third week in Cape Town, time is just flying by! I already know twelve weeks here is not going to provide nearly enough time to see or do half of the amazing things here. But considering it is already the start of my third week, I thought I should give some basic background information that I have failed to provide you (my oh so dedicated followers) with thus far. So here we go..
First off, for those of you who don't know, I'm here in Cape Town, South Africa through Seattle University's International Development Internship Program (more commonly known as IDIP) until the end of March. I'm interning with a microfinance related organization based out of Paris who conveniently happens to have an office in Cape Town. Contrary to what I thought, the organization is not actually a Micro Finance Institution (MFI), but rather they are a consulting organization that helps build capacity and strengthen existing MFIs by providing technical assistance and advisory services. The office in Cape Town is pretty small and, on a good day, the team consists of maybe 12 people (including myself and the three other interns working there). We work out of two rooms in a house (really similar to the Global Visionaries office I used to volunteer at) and share the space with another NGO (I'm not really sure what they do).
Within the organization I am specifically working on a project that is focused on implementing a microfranchise (basically just a simplified, less expensive version of a traditional franchise) centered around selling Energy Efficient and Renewable Energy (EE&RE) housing products in Townships (slums right outside of the city). Basically we're creating a franchise (yes, like McDonald's) that sells EE&RE products (i.e. solar water heaters, energy efficient lightbulbs, etc.) instead of hamburgers. The objectives of establishing this environmental-energy-related-microfranchise are to stimulate economic growth through providing access to jobs, reduce South Africa's use of coal-powered energy (thus, decrease the numerous health related issues that are a direct result from indoor air pollution and alleviating environmental degradation), and advocate and extend awareness about the effects of coal on the environmental and personal health, all while while providing safer, cleaner, energy to peri-urban areas (aka slums/Townships). What a mouthful. As you can guess, it's a very complicated project and it is still in the early development stage, but it's getting a lot of attention and many people seem to think it has a lot of potential.
So the organization that arranged my internship (who Seattle U pays) also arranged my housing. The majority of their interns (who come from all around the world) stay together in a fully furnished, fancy apartment complex in the heart of the City. It's really nice because there is always someone around to do things with and I've been able to meet all kinds of fun people. I have a breathtaking view of the renowned Table Mountain from my living room and live with two roommates who are both from the states. Melissa is from Atlanta and is interning for an organization regarding violence against women and gender equality, and Lisa, from Boston, works as a Child Life Specialist (or CLS for short/cool) at a nearby hospital. They both immediately noticed my wide range of dietary constraints (most notably vegetables), in fact all the interns here did, but now I'm sure they are quite fond of cooking modified versions of meals for me... don't worry, I do the dishes.
Now that the boring background info is out of the way hopefully I'll be enthusiastic to write more interesting posts (be on the lookout for one regarding pirate ships, beat boxing and SPF 110).
Fun fact: I used more than 20 sets of parenthesis in this post alone (and most likely not in the correct way).
The roommates! Melissa on left and Lisa in middle.
Me in Stellenbosch, a section of the country side famously known for their wine vineyards!
According to an international finance group, agriculture is a major source of livelihood throughout the world, especially for the majority of poor people living in rural areas in developing countries. A key challenge for the majority of these farmers is access to finance. Lack of access to finance is a key impediment to farmers in improving the efficiency of their productions and adopting better technologies. So, to have a better understanding about agricultural finance is a very important thing to the farmers or other people that may relate to it in their daily life. So that, after reading this artikel, we may have the understanding about the financial concepts and the practical applications of finance that is essential for anyone, especially the important managerial problems in agriculture that involve finance.
ReplyDeleteContact pedroloanss@gmail.com for agricultural loans and other kinds of loans at the rate of 2%.