-since besides writing a random comment or two and posting pictures I do not think I have told anything about the nature of work that I did in Georgia and now am about to start in Armenia.
I am a fellow working for the Research Department of FINCA International. FINCA International is a microfinance organization operating in many developing countries, including many of the former Soviet republics. Every summer FINCA sends a group of fellows to different countries that it operates in to conduct a comprehensive survey of microfinance client assessment regarding client demographics, land and asset ownership, expenditures and standard of living, access to financial products, as well as nature of client businesses. So my job is to conduct the survey together with two other fellows in each country, clean the collected data, do a primary analysis and send everything back to the Research Department, where they run more complicated cross-country research based on the data that we provide.
The Georgia team has already completed its assignment. While the work was pretty interesting and exciting, to say the least, there have been quite a few wtf moments, as we ran around all over Georgia with our quest of gathering the precious data. The survey itself, while standard for all coutries, reveals quite a bit of cultural insensitivity and plain ignorance of the said department. For example, literacy and level of education may be interesting issues to explore, but when you’re going to a country with 100 percent literacy rate, questions such as “Can you read and write?” appear completely redundant. Asking a Georgian (or an Armenian) man whether they feel capable of making important decisions regarding their lives would evoke no other reaction but a punch on the face (I do realize that poverty is defined not only through some set number, but also voicelessness and powerlessness of an indiviual, but please leave the Caucasus out of that equation, will you?). Under the section of assets, we ask cilents how many metal cooking pots and pans they have – in Africa ownership of a metal cookware may be an indicative of wealth, but seriously, when I asked my own mother how many pots and pans she had, I got “who counts them, anyway?” in response. Dear Research Department, Georgian (and I’m sure Armenian) women have A LOT OF POTS AND PANS, so the numbers that we have been sending you are NOT A MISTAKE, they’re not outliers and they do not necessarily point to the level of wealth in this part of the world. Just deal with it, ok?
Our findings in Georiga have been pretty unexciting to say the least. Knowing a little about this part of the world and futhermore, having worked for FINCA Armenia in the past as a loan disburser and database administrator for two solid years while I was still in college gave me a pretty clear picture that FINCA is not necessarily serving the “poor enterpreurs” – in fact out of the 309 respondents that we interviewed, only 3 happened to live under 2 dollars a day, and only some odd 10 percent is under the national poverty line. Natalie Portman, do you have something to say about this? What also infuriates me is that FINCA, being the good-guy all-compassionate and helpful microfinance organization operates in the region on the same terms as most commercial banks here. I would not count a monthly 3% interest rate (that’s 36% a year!!!!) as charity, so please be kind enough to revise your mission.
My Armenia assignment is just around the corner. While I am looking forward to the opportunity to visit the same office I used to work in and talking to my countrymen, I do not expect to find anything all that exhilirating and groundshaking. Good thing that Armenia is smaller than Georgia and that FINCA has branches in only 3 other cities besides Yerevan – at least I won’t be all over the place like we were in Georgia. But then, the sample we collect, although representative of the total population of clients of FINCA Armenia, won’t provide an accurate picture of Armenia in general, since the southern part of the country will be left out (FINCA has not made it to Kapan yet). Wish me luck and patience.
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