Experiencing culture and Argentine microfinance

For our last day in the big city, we spent it doing a lot of little interesting things! We started off the day visiting an Argentine micro finance organization called Cordial Negocios. The meeting was extremely enlightening and allowed us to greatly expand on our knowledge on how micro finance works in Argentina. We learned that the particular company we were learning about has about 7,000 clients that they lend money to and these loans are often not large and are only several thousands pesos. Where these loans goes is also monitored by the company. In addition, we learned that this year, for the first time since the start of this micro financing, in 2001, the company is making a profit this year. It was very interesting to hear stories of individuals who had received the loans, many of them being former immigrants, and how successful these individuals and their family members were able to become after the small loans. For the remainder of the day, after this interesting meeting we enjoyed our last bits of the great culture and richness of Buenos Aires. To work on the video project that we are creating, a couple of us ventured to the University of Buenos Aires Law School and interviewed students. Among other interesting things, we found that the law students here are extremely political and think that having a free education system for university is crucial. Finally, we ventured to the Malba, to see all of the beautiful Latin American art. I am sad to leave Buenos Aires and our time in the city really has flown by, but I can’t WAIT to get to Iguazu tomorrow!!