Work Journal: Offenbach

While I'm waiting for some more pics from Croatia to come in from my sources i.e. Dan, the other guy who was there, I thought it'd be good catch you guys up on some work I've been doing here in Germany.

The project I'm working on is an analysis of small and micro businesses loans in Germany. I conduct interviews with entrepreneurs who have received credit from a network of lenders that I work with.

On the side, I've been working on analyzing our credit software, data bank, and processes. It's basically impossible to do scientific work on data that isn't reliable. I thought this was going to be a minor task but over time has come to be a real problem fraught with internal politics, and a lot of wasted time.

Today however I can celebrate the some real progress on this front. In Offenbach today I met with the folks responsible for benchmarking our lending progress and for programming our software. We pooled our resources and hashed out some solutions to the problem.

One interesting thing is that this all took place in German. This doesn't bother me but I sometimes wonder if I'm seen as the 'foreigner' even if what I say is met with approval. Everyone in business is generally very receptive to me, but I'm sure I'm tougher to follow than a local.

I also got to interview some local small business owners who after some convincing- it always takes convincing- met with me to do an interview.

The first two were women from Romania who run a cleaning service. One woman had doubled her income since becoming self employed. Another woman grew up in Germany but has parents from Morocco. She started out by wholesaling goods from Morocco like furniture, housewares, decorations etc. and will expand that business online this year. She received a credit from our network to renovate a shop in Frankfurt (right across the river) to start selling retail. This is another example of how credit is helping people advance their businesses and their lives.

Tomorrow is the German version of Labor Day and in Berlin there are supposed to be demonstrations, the burning of cars that look nice/new, and general mayhem. I'm happy and disappointed to be missing it but I'll get to spend the holiday with fellow Fairfield grad and Fulbrighter Katie Bakarich. Then Saturday I'll be meeting the German wing of my brother-in-law Thomas' family. Can't wait!