By Rob Krieger | President & Founder
Dear Friends of Pajebal,
The Pajebal Team has been hard at work the last few months, both in the pursuit of the rest of the necessary financial backing to pilot our new project, and in setting up the appropriate technology infrastructure in Guatemala to ensure that our project will succeed.
The Guatemala Pajebal Team of Business Analyst Milthon Escobar, IT Analyst Jacob Pérez, Executive Agent Marco López, and Business Development Volunteer Barbara Weber have been concentrating their efforts on implementing an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system in the savings & loan cooperative CODICAP, our main partner in Guatemala. They have been working on this project for the past few months, setting the stage for a successful roll-out of our pilot. The Savings module of the software application has been completed and is in use, along with the solicitation and review components of the Credit module. Over the next one to two months Pajebal, along with our partner local software firm, will be putting the finishing touches on the rest of the Credit module and tying it all together through the Accounting and Teller modules to complete the development and implementation phase of the ERP system. Completion of this system will significantly enhance the efficiency and technological capabilities of our local partner, CODICAP, which is a key step towards ensuring both the quality of services we can provide our small business beneficiaries in Guatemala, and the timely provision of information to our U.S. company partners.
Meanwhile, Pajebal’s Team in the USA have been hard at work too. Pajebal was entered into three different business plan competitions in February: The Dell Social Innovation Challenge (http://www.dellchallenge.org/projects/pajebal), Duke University’s CASE (Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship) Seed Prize, and the Duke Startup Challenge. For the Dell Social Innovation Challenge we will find out if we made it to the next round on March 23rd. For the CASE Seed Prize, we were selected as one of the top three finalists! Unfortunately, we did not win 1st place and the associated cash prize, but it was great to participate and place in the top three. For the Duke Startup Challenge, the Pajebal Duke MBA student team of Jessie Margolis, Alex Ambroz and I have taken Pajebal to the semi-finals of this university-wide competition! It started out with 118 contending teams, and now it’s down to 40. We are in the process of developing our semi-final round materials which include a business plan of roughly twenty-five pages and a ten-minute video on Pajebal that will be posted on YouTube. Our Idea Summary (ten pages) was what successfully took us to the semi-final round – we would be happy to provide this document to any past or potential donors who would like to review it in order to make a more informed investment/contribution decision.
We sure had a great push of support during December’s Global Open Challenge on GlobalGiving! We thank you all again so much for this! We have thus far raised $5,450. We really would appreciate any additional support so that we can turn our GlobalGiving fundraising goal of $18,950 into a fundraising accomplishment, and get this pilot started – please let your friends and family know of what we’re doing, and of the motivated, dedicated, and experienced team behind Pajebal’s work.
$18,950 on GlobalGiving, here we come!
All the best,
Rob
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