Just one week after our opening tour for the international stage, Jori and I traveled to Mexico to collaborate on the next stage already started by Pablo: Project selection for the firsts loans. We are proud to announce that we have opened our first office overseas, to set the foundations of an angular stone for EthicHub: Local Nodes and project selection. Located in southern Mexico where nature is as lush and exuberant as it can get… but way far from technology as we are used to even telephone signal is deficient when you leave the main city area. When in Rome do as the Romans do: just assume it and do the best out of given circumstances, which turns out to the best way to better understand locals.
Wi-fi speed restrained us from keeping our community daily updated. I wanted so much to share with images worth thousands of words, how these small coffee growers are able to make a living under circumstances beyond first world countries understanding
We visited Belisario Dominguez, a small town head of an important coffee growing area into the Sierra Madre de Chiapas. We were there to meet Julio Briones, our first Local Node already interviewed by Pablo. Our mobile phones had lost signal kilometers ago. It was an amazing coincidence to meet Julio while fueling his vehicle at the same fuel station we have just stopped to ask for his whereabouts!
No phone signal is common stuff here. So in order to settle a date for an interview with a group of small producers, many factors must concur: someone has to travel there in advance to visit them one by one or at least to meet one of them who agrees to tell the others. With some luck, several of them will be at the agreed place on the agreed date and time.
We leave Chiapas quite confident on the job our great team is doing there. From now on, looking for and selecting projects will be the task for Pablo and the mexican team. We are very proud of what we have achieved, but we are also quite aware this is only the beginning.
We went to Mexico City to meet our legal advisor, Aurelio Benítez and Alejandra Hernández, a tax expert. It’s a wonderful feeling meeting for the first time these team members we are very used to work with and talk to. The wonders of technology and decentralized team work! Talking to these experts we realize one more time, we are creating new unknown scenarios, we are setting precedents for new regulations: we are building future!
