sipgabby (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} sipgabby) wrote,@ 2004-07-27 06:57:00 |
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MIBERLIM
So helping out at MIBERLIM has definitely been an experience. I supose when I first arrived I came in with this very American viewpoint of...I have this education and I am going to help you change your business in this way and in some way I actually thought that the models that I learned in business school would still somehow apply to this problem. Well, after the first day, I started to see why it takes so long to help or work through the problems of international groups. You deal with first and foremost a language barrier and secondly so many cultural differences. MIBERLIM has no accounting books for their business. Which although may seem surprising, is actually the norm here in Berlin. People have not been taught to appreciate accounting and many people simply do not record their transactions, nor do they see the importance in being accountable. So my first task was to sit down and basically to explain why accounting is important and why keeping books is helpful to a business and can actually help in the long run. Which was not an easy conversation to have especially when you are having it in Spanish.
I suppose the funniest part of the whole experience was when I asked the orgainzation to sit down with me as I tried to organize their books and figure out exactly how much money they had on July first. Well, after looking at their bank books, I was like, oh this won{t be too hard not too many transactions,etc. So I made an entry and kept going, only then I decided to ask the women I work with if this was all the money they had and if any was missing, and then they decided to pull out wads of cash, some of it labelled with what had been bought others just stray bills. Many people here do not keep their moeny in the bank because they dont trust the banks and they dont like the idea of paying for using their money. So I realized that these women had been walking around, for oh..the past year with close to three hundred dollars on their bodies, in their pockets, in their purses, in between the pages of books. Here that is a lot of money and since ladrones, or robbers are frequent, this was obviously not the best method for book keeping and accounting. That was when I realized that this task was going to be a bit more difficult than I had at first thought.
Helping out at MIBERLIM has been an extreme learning process. In the sense that it has really tested my patience, my business skills and my ability to persuade and explain my position to others (In spanish mind you). But I think the most rewarding part of that experience has been getting to know the lives and persons of the truely amazing women who came together to form this business. In a country where machismo is the rule of law, it was very refreshing to see a group of women band together to not only work towards a better life for their fmailies and themselves, but to form a business that with its environmental focus would actually work to make the community of Berlin a better place to live.
So helping out at MIBERLIM has definitely been an experience. I supose when I first arrived I came in with this very American viewpoint of...I have this education and I am going to help you change your business in this way and in some way I actually thought that the models that I learned in business school would still somehow apply to this problem. Well, after the first day, I started to see why it takes so long to help or work through the problems of international groups. You deal with first and foremost a language barrier and secondly so many cultural differences. MIBERLIM has no accounting books for their business. Which although may seem surprising, is actually the norm here in Berlin. People have not been taught to appreciate accounting and many people simply do not record their transactions, nor do they see the importance in being accountable. So my first task was to sit down and basically to explain why accounting is important and why keeping books is helpful to a business and can actually help in the long run. Which was not an easy conversation to have especially when you are having it in Spanish.
I suppose the funniest part of the whole experience was when I asked the orgainzation to sit down with me as I tried to organize their books and figure out exactly how much money they had on July first. Well, after looking at their bank books, I was like, oh this won{t be too hard not too many transactions,etc. So I made an entry and kept going, only then I decided to ask the women I work with if this was all the money they had and if any was missing, and then they decided to pull out wads of cash, some of it labelled with what had been bought others just stray bills. Many people here do not keep their moeny in the bank because they dont trust the banks and they dont like the idea of paying for using their money. So I realized that these women had been walking around, for oh..the past year with close to three hundred dollars on their bodies, in their pockets, in their purses, in between the pages of books. Here that is a lot of money and since ladrones, or robbers are frequent, this was obviously not the best method for book keeping and accounting. That was when I realized that this task was going to be a bit more difficult than I had at first thought.
Helping out at MIBERLIM has been an extreme learning process. In the sense that it has really tested my patience, my business skills and my ability to persuade and explain my position to others (In spanish mind you). But I think the most rewarding part of that experience has been getting to know the lives and persons of the truely amazing women who came together to form this business. In a country where machismo is the rule of law, it was very refreshing to see a group of women band together to not only work towards a better life for their fmailies and themselves, but to form a business that with its environmental focus would actually work to make the community of Berlin a better place to live.
