Declan Healey Senior Project

Date: April 30th The second day of Senior Project was filled with more initial research as we eased into our new roles for the next couple weeks. Today the research was focused on Laura’s microfinance graduate class at Georgetown, which we are going to sit in on early tomorrow evening. We had to become familiar with four different global finance companies: Equity Bank of Kenya, JUMO, BRAC, and Pro Mujer, as those are the four companies that Laura’s students will have to base their final project on. The day was divided between a 10 to 12 shift, and a 1 to 5 shift following an hour of lunch and talking. Afterwords we spent a good chunk of our time learning about the companies, so we wouldn’t be lost during Laura’s class, we got to chat with Laura about the importance of what the organizations were doing. She also gave us a recent piece of work from two students about potential impacts of regulating wall street, as she thought it would be good for us to read. Throughout the day, I cont...

Date: April 29th The initial day of our Senior Project was well spent with introductory research into our main topic of microfinance. Henry and I were a bit tired from traveling the day before, so we slept in a bit and got to work at 10 AM. Our first session of work, tasks provided by our mentor Laura Foose, lasted until 12 and required some research from the both of us. We had to come up with our own definitions of microfinance, read about a man named Muhammad Yunus, and explore his pioneering business Grameen Bank. As we took an hour-long break, we ate sandwiches and leftover Chinese food with some time for relaxation afterwords. Our afternoon work session went from 1 to 5, with some more research as well as conversations with Laura. Henry had mentioned a documentary he watched in AP Human Geo this year about two individuals living on a dollar a day, Kyle Connolly for the win, so we began to watch that as Laura thought it tied in well for us. We ended our work day with a walk with...