So What Do You Do Exactly?

After hearing adventures of daily moto rides and frequent marriage proposals, folks from home always pose this question as the development work of a Peace Corps Volunteer can vary dramatically. In Cameroon, there are four projects: Education, Community Health, Agroforestry, and Small Enterprise Development (a fifth Girl's Empowerment-ish program is currently planned for late 2011).

As for me, I am a Business Advisor in the Small Enterprise Development program. The primary goals of the project are to: 

 

-Promote the development and sharing of resources available to businesses and entrepreneurs

-Strengthen community members’ management and business skills through training and consulting

My host institution is MC2, a popular microfinance institution that can be found all over Cameroon. MC2's mission is to "provide local populations with a development tool that will help them achieve self-reliance both at individual and community levels". The name derives from the formula:

VP = M x C x C = MC2

Victory over Poverty (VP) can be achieved provided that the Means (M) and Competences (C) of the Community (C) are pooled together.

This is my primary project in which I serve as a technical advisor. I will spend the first two to three months observing and learning the operations of the organization and will then proceed with implementing recommendations.
*As of July 2012, MC2 has organized a targeted promotion increasing its women's savings accounts by 16%, strengthened its community outreach, trained all of its employees in information technology, and evaluated its due diligence procedures to decrease loan disbursement meeting times by 15%.