Texting for Serena

Serena Cocciolo wants you to text her, not for her but for the women in West Bengal who need funds to support their agricultural business or start a small entrepreneurial activity. A student at Bocconi in her first year of the Master of Science in Economic and Social Sciences, Serena is a volunteer at the association Project for People, which launched a text messaging campaign to raise funds for microfinancing projects to help women in the poor rural area south of Kolkata.

Serena dealt with microcredit projects firsthand last year, during her third year in the Bachelor in Economic and Social Sciences at Bocconi. As part of an internship program for the degree, she spent three months in India with Project for People, a non-profit organization which has been sponsoring cooperative and development projects to promote self-sustainability in local populations in India, Benin and Brazil since 1993.

"My goal for after university is to work in the field of cooperatives and development, and in particular in the microcredit sector. I chose this internship because it gives me the chance to get experience directly in the field," explains Serena.

In January 2009 she left for India and stayed in Kolkata for three months, traveling to villages within a 100km radius from the city. Serena observed current projects and worked on accounting expenses, loan allocation process analysis and gathering data on operations. She also helped monitor the Women Peace Council project which aims to develop the role of several women as Judges of the Peace to resolve legal and family issues in the villages.

"I saw how microcredit worked firsthand, along with the effort of involving women and most women's happiness and satisfaction about what they were able to create," says Serena. "It was a very educational experience. I learned a lot from the local staff, but also from the communities involved, observing their different worlds."

After returning to Milan, Serena wanted to continue her collaboration so she started working at the microcredit group of the association, working mainly with the organization and coordination of internships in India for Bocconi students (about six per year) as well as with accounting and analysis of several microfinancing projects.

Project for People recently promoted a campaign for text messaging to raise funds for microfinancing projects in India to allow "women and their families to get out of a state of poverty and redeem themselves from the role of marginalization," as the association explains. Funds are intended to provide small loans which allow women to support or launch a business (both traditional handcrafts and agricultural) and allow their children to attend school (a mandatory requirement to take advantage of microcredit). Collected funds will also supply drinking water to the villages.