Author Archive
Farewell from the Field
By Claudine Emeott, KF14, Nepal
To sign off from my post as a Kiva Fellow with BPW Patan in Nepal, I thought that I would take a cue from Alexis Ditkowsky, who wrapped up her Fellows Blog contribution by leaving readers with a note that she wrote to lenders who have funneled loans to WDB in South Africa. Below is my own note to BPW Patan lenders, but the gratitude from the Kiva borrower featured below should be enjoyed by all.
Dear BPW Patan lenders,
As I wrap up my three-month Kiva Fellowship with BPW Patan in Nepal, I want to share a few highlights with you and thank you for your support of this great organization.
I am very grateful for the opportunity to volunteer on behalf of Kiva and to learn about the experiences of both BPW staff and borrowers with Kiva. First and foremost, I want to convey how much BPW values Kiva funding. When BPW became a Kiva partner in 2007, Kiva provided crucial funding during a particularly challenging time for the organization. As BPW has continued to grow and flourish during the last four years, Kiva loans continue to supply the organization with important 0% interest funding to do its amazing work with women borrowers in Nepal. BPW staff members proudly talk about how quickly their loans get funded on the www.kiva.org website – as you lenders likely know, within just two or three hours.
As for my interactions with Kiva borrowers, I have been fortunate to take many productive and rewarding trips to the field. For some of these visits, I conducted borrower verifications, and during this process I brought along printed copies of the borrowers’ profiles. When sharing the profiles with the borrowers, I always pointed to the photos and names of their Kiva lenders at the top of the page. Borrowers – and their fellow group members for that matter – invariably studied their profiles intently, particularly focusing on the lenders from around the world who helped make their business dreams a reality.
One of these borrowers, Sarswati Thapa, is pictured in the photo below.
Sarswati Thapa, BPW Patan Borrower
Like 90% of BPW’s borrowers, Sarswati works in agriculture. Here she is chopping down a papaya, one of the crops that she grows on her small family farm adjacent to her home. In addition to papaya, Sarswati also grows green onions, cauliflower, and a plant that provides the foundation for garam masala spice. Farming in Nepal can be challenging, given the long stretches of dry weather and water shortages from October through April. Sarswati mentioned that she had already lost some crops to drought, and the Kiva loan – her first – helped her pay for additional seeds that she would not have been otherwise able to afford this growing season. At the moment, she and her family manage the farm on their own, supplying produce to their local village. But with additional land surrounding her home, she hopes to eventually expand her business and employ people on her farm.
From all of us at BPW Patan, thank you for lending to women in Nepal. With your loans, you not only provide BPW borrowers with the ability to purchase inputs for their businesses, but also empower them to dream about the future.
Sincerely,
Claudine Emeott
Claudine Emeott has been honored to work with the women of BPW Patan in Nepal. Although she is wrapping up her fellowship, she looks forward to remaining in close touch with her new friends at BPW Patan because she is staying in Nepal to work in the development sector. Check out the BPW Patan Lending Team and consider making a loan to a woman entrepreneur from Nepal.
Previous posts by Claudine Emeott:
Giving Women a Voice: Local Governance in BPW Patan
Women Working for Women: Staff + Client Collaboration in Nepal
Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Landscape of Microfinance in Nepal
Small if Beautiful: Microcredit Fair in Nepal
Giving Women a Voice: Local Governance in BPW Patan
Against a backdrop of political upheaval in Nepal, Kiva’s local partner, BPW Patan, has not only maintained course as a women’s advocacy group and microcredit organization but has also empowered its women borrowers with a healthy local governance structure that promotes leadership and encourages women to voice their opinions.
Women Working for Women: Staff + Client Collaboration in Nepal
By Claudine Emeott, KF14, Nepal
On my first day of work at BPW Patan in Nepal, I took a quick look around the office and was amazed to find myself surrounded by almost all women. Granted, it is a small office — BPW occupies just one room — but the ratio of women to men is nonetheless striking. All of BPW’s full-time staff, including loan officers and accountants, are women. BPW’s entire board is made up of women with impressive and varied backgrounds, ranging from commercial bankers and university professors to a former Supreme Court Justice (she and Sandra Day O’Connor are friends). Of the 17 people working for BPW on a paid or volunteer basis, only two are men. With all due respect to these two men for their invaluable work with BPW, it is, to be sure, the women who run the show. I say this because I know the men would agree!
BPW, which stands for Business and Professional Women, serves only women borrowers, so its very foundation is rooted in a mission to empower female entrepreneurs.
BPW Borrowers at Group Meeting
Of course, many microfinance institutions share this common goal, and my fellow Kiva Fellow Mei-Ing Cheok recently wrote a great post about CRAN’s work with women in Ghana. What strikes me about BPW is not the mission itself but the way it is carried out.
For starters, it is clear that the staff genuinely enjoy their work. They smile. They laugh. They have a spring in their step on their way to the office (okay, maybe that’s just me). And, lest we forget, this is hard work, with long bus rides to and from the field and piles of paperwork waiting for them upon their return.
During loan meetings in the field, the staff and borrowers interact with ease, friendliness, and warmth. They share stories about their families and pass around babies. They linger after the work is done, talking over tea. Sometimes an invitation to a borrower’s home for fresh curd and a Hindi film is too good to pass up. The borrowers have extended their familiarity and generosity to me as well, not hesitating to tell me when I have ink smeared all over my face (thank you) and inviting me back the following week for dinner at their houses.
This level of equality extends beyond personal relationships to professional collaboration. BPW works in 62 different centers, which have up to eight groups of five women each; the members of each center elect a Center Chief, who is responsible for managing the groups and assisting loan officers at center meetings. The photo below shows Kiva borrower Narayan Devi Maharjan, a center chief in the village of Thecho. At the last meeting, Narayan Devi took over the calculator, helping the loan officers with their work — and clearly enjoying it.
Center Chief Narayan Devi Maharjan Helps Loan Officers with the Books
All borrowers benefit from required financial literacy training and can also participate in reading and writing classes (an estimated 30% of BPW’s borrowers are illiterate).
BPW staff have also solicited business advice from their clients. Several of BPW’s staff and board members are entrepreneurs themselves, and Urmila Shrestha, BPW’s director, has taken advice from borrowers about design and material choices for her textile business.
BPW Director Urmila Shrestha Wears One of Her Handwoven Shawls, Inspired by BPW Borrowers
Working in an office with a female majority is a new experience for me. And at this office in particular, it is an empowering and inspiring one.
Hand in Hand: BPW Officer and Borrower
Claudine Emeott is honored to be working with the women — both staff and borrowers — of Nepal’s BPW Patan. Check out the BPW Patan Lending Team and consider making a loan to a woman entrepreneur from Nepal (both women and men lenders are welcome!).
Previous posts by Claudine Emeott:
Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Landscape of Microfinance in Nepal
Small if Beautiful: Microcredit Fair in Nepal
Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Landscape of Microfinance in Nepal
By Claudine Emeott, KF14, Nepal
Over the last several months, the microfinance industry has come under considerable fire. These criticisms largely address reports emerging from the Indian state Andhra Pradesh, where the rapid growth of microfinance led to predatory lending and overindebtedness.
In Nepal, just across the border from India, I find myself contemplating the opposite problem: the slow growth of the microfinance sector in remote mountain areas.
On a clear day in Kathmandu, you can actually see the Himalayas from the city:
When the Smog and Dust Clear: Glimpsing the Himalayas from Kathmandu
While these mountains — the highest in the world — seem so close from this vantage point, in reality they are quite far because we have to account for both horizontal and vertical distances as well as poor road networks and frequent landslides that make travel difficult.
The Langtang Range, which is directly north of Kathmandu, is only a six-hour bus ride from the city, but villages cling to mountain sides at approximately 13,000 feet in elevation. And this mountain area, compared to others, is relatively accessible. Many people from the far northeast or northwest corners of Nepal describe their journeys to their home villages like so: “Well, first you take a bus for two days. And then you walk for five more.” Let’s not forget that the five-day walk is primarily UPHILL.
It is no wonder, then, that microfinance players in Nepal struggle to penetrate these remote mountain regions. A 2007 World Bank report, “Access to Finance in Nepal,” lays out statistics that overwhelmingly reinforce the uneven geographic distribution of financial services. The Terai, which encompasses the southernmost band of Nepal, is home to 48% of the country’s population, which collects 72% of the country’s microfinance loans. The Hills, in the middle of the country, include 44% of the population and receive 22% of microfinance loans. The Mountains rank last, with 7% of Nepal’s population and only 0.02% of microfinance loans.
Commercial bank branches are not financially feasible in villages at altitudes of at least 4,000 meters and with rugged topography. The harsh reality to this truth, though, is that these same barriers to financial institutions also make for the most challenging economic conditions in the country. Although financial NGOs and cooperatives have attempted to fill in the gaps that banks cannot, the numbers above tell a compelling story: some of Nepal’s poorest people do not have access to finance.
The landscape of microfinance in Nepal may be changing soon, though. One of Nepal’s commercial banks is finalizing a microfinance subsidiary, and it aims to use its competitive edge in technology to reach remote mountain areas. This bank was the first to introduce mobile banking in 2009, and only two banks have followed suit since, so mobile banking is still a nascent concept in Nepal. That said, there is real potential for mobile banking to dramatically change the supply of microfinance in Nepal, which has a wide-reaching 3G network. In 2009, after all, 3G service came to Mount Everest. That alone gives me high hopes for this trend.
Claudine Emeott is a Kiva Fellow serving with BPW Patan in Nepal. She has an obsession with the Himalayas and in another life fancies herself a mountaineer. Want to help women entrepreneurs in Nepal? Join the BPW Patan Lending Team to make a difference in this small but beautiful mountain country.
Small is Beautiful: Microcredit Fair in Nepal
By Claudine Emeott, KF14, Nepal
Yesterday marked BPW Patan’s first microcredit fair, which gathered 50 of BPW’s women borrowers to showcase their products.
"Heartly" Indeed: BPW Lovingly and Proudly Showcases its Borrowers
BPW’s director, Urmila Shrestha, confided that this fair has been a dream of hers for the last two years, but she was nervous about pulling together the resources — both money and manpower — in order to make it a success.
Thanks to the hard work of Urmila and her fellow staff over the last several months, success was the theme of the fair today, from the individual stories of the borrowers to the realization of the fair itself. Urmila’s smile is proof:
Urmila Shrestha, Director of BPW Patan
The event started with a brief welcome by BPW board members and a keynote speech by Dr. Chintamani Yogi, who took a slight spiritual bent with his address. He urged the audience to appreciate the goodness in small things, repeating the phrase “small is beautiful” both in Nepali and English (thank you, Dr. Yogi) and praising BPW borrowers for their successful small businesses.
After the opening ceremonies concluded, the rest of the day unfolded with a steady stream of visitors pouring in to buy organic vegetables, homemade pickle, spices, grains, and many different kinds of handicrafts. Below are some highlights of the products on display:
Handmade Notebooks
Handknit Key Chains
Sundried Mustard Greens
Turmeric Powder
Pink Radishes
One BPW borrower sold out of her organic spinach and radishes (fortunately, I bought my stash early in the day). Another BPW client who is also a Kiva borrower could not take a moment to rest because she was constantly tending to a crowd of customers at her stall, where she sold grains, beans, chilies, and spices.
Crowd of Shoppers at a Very Busy Food Vendor
In addition to shopping, there was food to eat:
Traditional Newari Meal
And conversations to be had:
BPW Staff
By both young and old.
Granddaughter and Grandfather
Although no one sent me the memo about wearing a red sari,
Row of Red Saris
I felt welcomed and privileged to participate in this great event. I agree with Dr. Yogi that small can be beautiful, but I must say that the success of these women borrowers is anything but small.
BPW Borrowers Selling Handwoven Silk Kurtas
BPW Borrower Selling Mustard Seeds, Mustard Greens, and Mustard Oil
BPW Borrowers Selling Handwoven Shawls
Claudine Emeott is a Kiva Fellow working with BPW Patan in Patan, Nepal. Want to support women entrepreneurs in Nepal? Check out the BPW Patan Lending Team.
Lights out in Nepal: Working through Load-Shedding
By Claudine Emeott, KF14, Nepal
When I arrived in Nepal to begin work with Kiva’s local partner here, BPW Patan, the majority of tourists and trekkers had just cleared out, likely heading for warmer climates or at least easier living conditions — because, by most standards, winter makes life in Nepal rather challenging.
First, there is the cold. Yes, daytime temperatures reach the mid 60s, which is about 60 degrees warmer than the temperatures I gladly left behind in Chicago. But there is no central heat, and buildings are constructed of cement and marble, with no insulation. So while it may be sunny and warm outside, I am finding it common to see my breath indoors at the same time. There are ways to combat the cold, though, and I am following the example set by locals, who wear several layers, scarves, and the wool ear-flap hats that are de rigueur these days:
My First Purchase in Kathmandu: The Functional and Fashionable Ear-Flap Hat
While the cold can get slightly uncomfortable, a far more challenging aspect of winter is a lack of water. Nepal has a dry season, generally from October through March, and a wet season, typically from April through September. When the water levels are low in the dry season, the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) has to forcibly reign in electricity consumption with scheduled power cuts, which, at their worst, make up 12-14 hours of each day. Here is the current load-shedding schedule; it is generally reliable, but in practice the time blocks may differ by an hour or more:
The Current Load-Shedding Schedule (Timeframes Listed Refer to Power Cuts)
Although the load-shedding schedule ensures that all areas equally receive (or do not receive) electricity, this nod to fairness stops there. I am fortunate enough to live in a home with an inverter, which allows us to power our laptops, run wireless internet, and use low-watt light bulbs even when the electricity is off. Many people, though, cannot afford an inverter (depending on the inverter and its capability, prices start at about $60 and climb into the tens of thousands of dollars).
BPW Patan, whose office is located in Group 7 for the load-shedding schedule, does not have an inverter. As staff told me repeatedly on my first day at the office, working without consistent and plentiful electricity during the winter months is very challenging. BPW has accordingly kept its operations relatively low-tech. For non-Kiva loans, BPW staff keep meticulous records in paper ledgers:
Paper Ledgers at BPW Patan
And use standard calculators and good math skills for their calculations (seeing this, I tried to recall the last time I did not use Excel to perform financial calculations. I came up short).
Loan Officer Sahani Shrestha Tracking Loans
To track their Kiva loans, the staff use a laptop and internet off-site, typically at the house of BPW‘s director, Urmila Shrestha. Because of the load-shedding schedule, Sanjeev (the Kiva Coordinator), Urmila, and now I often have to work at odd hours to process Kiva-related tasks.
But despite these challenges, BPW Patan still manages to serve a current count of 1,248 women borrowers. I find this pretty amazing.
Claudine Emeott is a Kiva Fellow working with BPW Patan in Patan, Nepal. Want to support women entrepreneurs in Nepal? Check out the BPW Patan Lending Team.
