Mission Statement

As part of the impact team, I know that it is essential for us to have a mission statement.  Not only does it give us a goal to work towards, but it also helps to keep us on task and moving in the same direction.  That being said, we need to have a cohesive mission statement that we all agree on.  We need to be united in our goals and in the way we approach the problem of poverty.

Mission Statement:

To create sustainable economic growth through “client-centered” programs.

This statement allows for quantitative and qualitative analysis on our impact.  We can easily look at the development of the community as a whole and of the specific people.  Social well-being and income must be considered in the analysis.

I feel that La Ceiba is not only looking at the short term effects, but also at sustainability.  Therefore the impacts that we have need to continue after we leave.  We need to be able to measure the outputs of our work so that we can see the effects of our work.

La Ceiba is an organization dedicated to improving the lives of people in Honduras.  In order to achieve this, we must have a united goal that we can move together towards.  For me, knowing that I may have some true impact in the lives of others is one of the reasons that I try so hard throughout the class.

Laura and I had an interesting discussion this morning about La Ceiba’s mission statement.  I feel that I need to add some of the points we discussed.  One of the key things is that our MFI program is merely the tool that we have chosen to use to alleviate poverty.  Overtime, this tool may change into something else that we see as more useful.  I feel that our mission statement must therefore be flexible to change and not only centered around our MFI program.  That being said,  we still need a way to measure our impact and to study what we are doing.  Just being told that we are doing a good job cannot be sufficient if we are to legitimize our group.

2 Responses to “Mission Statement

  • Specifying that we are a “client-centered” program is key, that distinguishes us from some of our more profit-driven MFI brethren.

    “we still need a way to measure our impact and to study what we are doing”

    ^Hopefully Russ and I can help with the above, both through financial analysis and the equally important customer satisfaction survey. The latter gives us more insight into how their increased access to capital/education tangibly improves their lives.

  • The fact that you include sustainability is key, I think. Right now, we’re so focused on making this work at all that we’re kind of ignoring sustainability, but a mission statement has to look at the longer term, and including this in our mission statement forces us to confront our long-term impacts in every major decision. That’s how I see the mission statement functioning in La Ceiba: being a benchmark for us to compare all our actions with. It needs to tell us what we are trying to do, and how we’re trying to do it. I realize that the word limit is a constraint, but “client-centered” is perhaps a bit vague for those who haven’t read Datar’s article. And the mission statement has to make our goals immediately apparent to those outside La Ceiba.

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