Solomon Islands Due Diligence trip – final blog post

Hello everybody from the Solomon Islands . This will be my last blog post as this adventure is coming to an end.
I’ve been very lucky to discover a country that I knew nothing about. A country with strong traditions and a proud culture.

During the past two months I have discovered four provinces, traveled by boat, plane and 4×4-vehicles, visited over 40 villages, surveyed hundreds of women and in general learnt a lot from this little treasure hidden in the South Pacific.

The most important experience for me has been meeting all the nice hard-working people. Their lives are tough, often living day-to-day, but their smiles are everlasting. Their main needs are permanent housing, proper sanitation and access to water. In order to meet these, they run informal businesses to generate extra income, but those businesses cannot grow due to a lack of capital.
SPBD provides financial services to women that face those difficulties. It supplies training, credit, savings, and insurance products. The changes in the customers’ lives can be seen and felt – they generate more income which helps improve their standards of living and are able to save more in order to face the challenges that life sometimes presents them with.
A little start-up capital and a safe place to deposit their money can go a long way in improving our customers’ lives and the future of their families.

That is all, folks! I do hope that you have enjoyed this blog and have learned a bit about the Solomon Islands and the amazing work that SPBD performs in this little piece of paradise.

Jose Ignacio Zabaleta Kaehler, cfa
Finance Professor
MBA business School, Canary Islands
nachozabaleta@sinbanco.org