Posts filed under ‘Africa’
Secrets of the ELA Sisterhood (Part I)
Life is not easy for a lot of young women in Uganda. Many girls in poorer urban areas and in rural villages are regularly confronted with sexual assault, unwanted or unintended pregnancies, HIV, and the list goes on. These girls are also commonly forced to drop out of school early because they can no longer pay fees or because they need to help support their families. With these kinds of hardships, young girls are often trapped in poverty with few, if any, opportunities to develop independence and improve their lives.
Enter BRAC. Four years ago, BRAC Uganda began to address some of these problems by implementing what they call the Empowerment and Livelihood for Adolescence Program (ELA Program). The program is designed specifically “to improve the quality of the life of vulnerable adolescents by organizing them, creating spaces of their own and helping them develop a set of skills so that they can live and grow as confident, empowered and self reliant individuals contributing to change in their own families and communities.”
Because it is set up to achieve so many ambitious goals, the ELA program can seem fairly complex at first glance. In this blog post, I want to outline how the program is organized and talk a little bit about some of the social components of the ELA clubs. And in the next blog post, I’ll talk more about the finance components of the ELA program and about the impact of the program overall.
General Organization of ELA
Meet Barbara. She works extremely hard to train ELA staff and to develop materials for the program. She has also been with the ELA program from the beginning and has an excellent grasp on how the program functions and on how far it has come. In the video below, I asked her about what she’s currently working on and about some of the major changes she has seen in the program over the years. Check it out:
As Barbara said in the video, the ELA program has expanded significantly in the past few years and as a result, has become much more decentralized. A colleague at BRAC once joked with me: “anyone who says they understand everything that’s going on with the organization is crazy.” Yet somehow, the program functions with uncanny efficiency.
ELA Management
Each ELA girl is a member of a local club, which is organized and managed by a mentor. There are currently a total 785 clubs, which are located all across Uganda. In general, clusters of about 10-15 clubs are linked to Branch Offices based on proximity. Each branch office has a Project Assistant who is responsible for supervising all of the clubs associated with the branch and for helping the clubs to strengthen their relationships with surrounding communities. The Project Assistants report directly to the Area Coordinators, who are responsible for overseeing a handful of Branch Offices in a specific district. Area Coordinators report to Regional Coordinators, who then report to the Uganda Program Manager. The program manager is responsible for overseeing all big-picture aspects of the program and is stationed mainly at the BRAC Country Office in Kampala.
Microfinance Staff
The ELA microfinance, which is recent addition to the ELA program, requires some additional staff members. At the branch level, there are Credit Officers, who are tasked with overseeing all the financial components of the program. ELA microfinance also has its own set of Area Coordinators, who are responsible for managing microfinance at multiple branches and must be present at all loan disbursements. The microfinance Area Coordinators also report to the Regional Managers and to the Program Manager. Every month, all of the Area Coordinators meet with the Program Manager at the Country Office to review the performance of their clubs and to discuss how to improve the program.
Club Houses
The space used for the program consists mainly of extensions of community member’s houses, or of public buildings rented by BRAC from local governments. This is the main space where club members and mentors meet six afternoons per week. The clubs also use community sports fields for certain athletic activities.
How to Join
The requirements to join a club aren’t strict at all. Any girl between 13 and 21 years old, who is a permanent citizen of Uganda and who can pay the 2,000 UGX (~$0.80) admission fee can join. All she really has to do is approach the local club’s mentor and ask.
The Social Components of ELA Clubs
Community Participation
One thing that is emphasized over and over again when discussing the ELA program with BRAC management is community involvement. From what I was able to gather, this happens in mainly two ways. The first way is called a mothers forum. Once, every two weeks or so, the Project Assistant from the branch will get together with the mothers of club members to discuss the club programs and things that the mothers can do to help empower their daughters. Another way that the community is involved with ELA clubs is through community leaders’ workshops. These are events where prominent female figures from the community visit a club to talk to the girls about sexual health, life challenges or a host of other topics.
Life Skills Based Education
The ELA program also provides girls with resources to learn more about life challenges and how to overcome them. The clubs focus on a wide range of topics including reproductive health, menstruation, familial and community responsibility, leadership, bride price, early pregnancy, STIs, family planning and rape. Mentors will normally focus on one aspect of one of these topics every day, and occasionally guest speakers will come to the clubs to give presentations to the girls. BRAC has also published books on each of these topics consisting of general advice and collections of stories from the lives of ELA girls.
Just below is a kind of introductory story from BRAC’s book on family planning. It’s called “Tough Times,” and is mainly about a young, 20-year-old woman named Stella and her struggle through her second pregnancy. It emphasizes the importance of leaving time between births.
Last year, in 2009, I got married to Mike, a bicycle cyclist. I’m now five months pregnant. I was forced into marriage because my parents never wanted to stay with a pregnant woman. I had long stopped studying due to lack of finances at home.
Mike stayed in a remote village. Once in a while, when a vehicle passed, every one waited in anticipation of their relative. City people are claimed to be rich since they always carry with them so many gifts. In the village the main source of livelihood is agriculture and most of the farming done is for consumption.
As it was my first pregnancy, I lacked knowledge on how to care for myself. Friends, however, encouraged me to visit the health centre for checkups.
Throughout the pregnancy, I visited the health centre only once. The long distance discouraged me form frequenting the place. I also lacked the money to receive the medical attention I needed. As a result, a traditional birth attendant helped me to give birth to my first child. She was easily available and cheap.
Much as Mike tried so hard to meet every need of the family, the poor man failed. To make matters worse, I conceived again after ten months. This also affected our daughter so much. She was ever sick and crying. I also stopped breast feeding her since e I was down with morning sicknesses and the general discomfort that comes with pregnancy. Eating also became a problem since we could only afford one meal a day.
When it reached birth, Mike was able to gather some money to transport me to the health centre. I delivered with the help of the nurse, but I faced severe complications. I almost bled to death. I was weak and anemic. My baby looked so sick that I doubted his survival. My daughter was stunted. Having two children in a couple of years was too much for me and it also strained my husband a lot.
The nurse advised me to go back for postnatal care, with my husband. She later explained that child birth was the most risky incidence and a threat to the woman’s health and that of her baby. She emphasized the need for birth spacing if we were to take good care of our children’s health and needs.
When the nurse had finished talking, it surprised me that I was so ignorant about family planning methods and birth spacing. Use of contraceptives would give me enough time to properly heal and properly take care of myself and the children before getting unexpected pregnancy.
Since then, I have learned to use contraceptives. I plan on waiting for my two children to properly grow before I conceive again. It is also important that I get a job so that I can supplement on Mike’s income. This will help us to properly take care of our family and keep it happy.
Club Activities
To me, the club activities are in a big way the heart of the ELA program. They afford the ELA girls a daily opportunity to take a break from adversity, to talk about their experiences and to learn from one another.
Towards the end of my fellowship, I was lucky enough to visit the Kanyanya Club in the Zanna district in Kampala. Just before lunch one day, I hop on the back of a boda boda and speed just a few kilometers up the road to the main traffic hub in Zanna. I pick up two oily, floury pancakes called chapattis for lunch, then march off of the main road, back into the Zanna “slums” to find the Branch Office. I get a little lost on the winding backroads, but am only a few minutes late – Uganda style.
Once at the office, I am greeted warmly by the Project Assistant and an Area Manager I’ve met before. The three of us travel up about two kilometers of steep, dusty roads in the hot afternoon sun. It would have been much easier to take a boda boda, but the project assistant had recently been in an accident and really didn’t want to take any more chances. Just as I think I am running out of steam, we reach the top of a huge incline, descend down a short lane with lots of tree shade, and finally arrive at the club house.
It’s around two o’clock, and more and more girls filter in over the next hour. Many of the members aren’t around because they’ve gone to visit family in the villages for the holiday, and many of the girls that show up are also a bit drained from the intense heat of the sun. We still have a great time playing board games and dancing. Fortunately, I have my Flipcam and am able to grab some great footage of the club house and of the girls. Enjoy!
Andrew Huelsenbeck is a Kiva Fellow who worked in Kampala with BRAC Uganda. To learn more about BRAC, please visit their Kiva Partner Page. If you are interested in helping to empower one or more of BRAC’s many wonderful entrepreneurs, you can join the Friends of BRAC Uganda lending team or check out new BRAC Uganda loans on Kiva.org. Happy lending!
Same Continent, Different Worlds: Part 2
By Kiva Fellows in Africa, KF16
Compiled by Tejal Desai
Ow de body! Are Sierra Leone and Rwanda still danger zones? What challenges do Ugandans most commonly face? Kiva Fellows from KF16 bring you another unique perspective from the diverse and vast continent of Africa! We patched together an overview of each of our placement countries that includes: basic socioeconomic stats, common stereotypes (and to what extent they are true or false), greatest challenges, most common loan products at our respective field partners, and the borrowers’ most common use of their profits. Our part 2 series follows the Kiva Fellows through Sierra Leone, Rwanda, and Uganda. We hope our summaries give you a new perspective on the continent and its distinct countries that we’ve been fortunate to explore, thanks to the Kiva fellowship!
Continue Reading 2 January 2012 at 13:00 Tejal Desai Leave a comment
60 Tips from Kiva Fellows
Compiled by Kate Bennett, KF16 Peru
The sixteenth class of Kiva Fellows has all but left the field- but we’re by no means done talking about our experiences. We’ve collectively spent 422 weeks in the field (just over 8 years!) and worked an estimated 16,650 hours at Kiva field partners around the world. Needless to say, we’ve got a lot of opinions about how to use this time wisely.
Now, we’re no experts in living or working abroad (though we sure do like it), but we have some nuggets of wisdom to offer up for those of you transitioning into a life abroad or beginning your next Kiva Fellowship. Stick by these tips, and you can’t go wrong. (And for more hints and tips, check out 33 Tips from Kiva Fellows (written November 2009) or 45 More Tips from Kiva Fellows in South America.) Enjoy!
Continue Reading 30 December 2011 at 04:00 Kate Bennett 4 comments
Mali in Color (Part 2): Impressions from the Road
By Kathrin Gerner, KF16, Rwanda
In the first part of this blog series, I shared pictures of Malian borrowers. But even on my way to those borrowers, I was not able to put down my camera. Here are my favorite shots from the road.
Continue Reading 13 December 2011 at 02:00 Kathrin Gerner 1 comment
Mali in Color (Part 1): Impressions of Kiva Borrowers
By Kathrin Gerner, KF16, Rwanda
When I boarded a plane to Mali last week, I was not exactly enthusiastic. One reason may have been the unpleasant 2 AM take-off from Kigali, another the recent Al-Qaida kidnappings in the North, which meant that all relevant tourist spots were off limits. And six months into my career as a Kiva fellow, a routine task such as a borrower visit was not enough to get me excited.
I was in for a surprise.
The borrowers of Kiva’s Malian field partner Soro Yiriwaso and their incredible hospitality, made my trip unforgettable. I came to check borrowers’ identities and look at loan papers. I left with a mountain of presents, a full stomach and a serious caffeine high after the countless cups of sweat tea offered to me everywhere I went.
But I was most excited about finally being in a country where people love to be photographed. Below are my favorite shots from my meetings with Malian borrowers.
Continue Reading 12 December 2011 at 03:00 Kathrin Gerner 6 comments
Update from the Field: Loan Officer Training, a Photographic Journey + Kiva Gift Cards
Compiled by Kathrin Gerner, KF16, Rwanda
December has long been the month of annual awards, looking back and frantic searches for presents. The Kiva fellows blog is no exception to this rule: Share the fellows’ memories by taking a photographic journey through Sierra Leone and watching a video about a typical day of a fellow conducting loan officer trainings. Learn about some incredible women in Costa Rica, who received a Woman Entrepreneur Award from Kiva’s field partner, Fundación Mujer. And to avoid the frantic searches this year, consider surprising your loved ones with the gift that keeps on giving, the Kiva Gift Card.
Continue Reading 12 December 2011 at 02:00 Kathrin Gerner Leave a comment
Swit Salone: A Journey in Photos
By Tejal Desai, KF16, Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone boasts lush, tumultuous landscapes, postcard-worthy beaches, delectable home cooking, inspiring stories, and some of the friendliest people you’ll meet. I was fortunate to have been placed in Freetown, Sierra Leone for my Kiva Fellowship at BRAC Sierra Leone. Follow my journey through this beautiful country and its capital city, Freetown. Hope you enjoy the photos!
Continue Reading 6 December 2011 at 13:00 Tejal Desai 4 comments
Updates from the Field: Autonomy, Sierra Leone and the 2011 Kiva Love Tour
Compiled by Kate Bennett, KF16, Peru
This week’s updates come at a time of change for Fellows around the world. As the holidays near, Fellows prepare to phase out of their current placements, move on to the next ones, and tie up loose ends with their Kiva Field Partners. But this doesn’t interfere with Fellows’ primary mission: to ensure that Kiva’s work and the work of our Field Partners is, too, sparking change as the new year approaches.
Continue Reading 5 December 2011 at 04:00 Kate Bennett 2 comments
Malaria Dreams: The True Kiva Fellowship Experience
By Tejal Desai, KF16, Sierra Leone
As my Kiva fellowship winds down, I reflect on the memorable journey I’ve been privileged to experience through the Kiva Fellows Program as a member of its 16th class. Through personal revelations and humbling lessons in adaptation, microfinance work, cultural differences (and a unique incidence of malaria), I’ve grown attached to beautiful Sierra Leone. Throughout the fellowship, I’ve found my journey paralleling that of a character in a humorous novel, Malaria Dreams by Stuart Stevens, in which a man travels through the Central African Republic in one mission in mind: to find a friend’s Land Rover and drive it back to Europe — only to find that his 3-month journey has a lot more in store for him than he anticipated, and nothing goes exactly as planned. My fellowship similarly followed suit with its own surprises, bumps in the road, and memorable moments.
Continue Reading 1 December 2011 at 16:00 Tejal Desai 6 comments
Update from the Field: Adapting for Borrowers by Borrowers, Microinsurance +SKFL
Compiled by Jim Burke, KF16, Nicaragua
A Warm Welcome! Manana offers the best from her garden. By DJ Forza, Georgia
This week’s Fellows Blog focuses on adaptability: Adapting microinsurance to poor households in Indonesia, an MFI in Turkey adapts to the needs of women entrepreneurs, a multifaceted borrower in Nepal adapts to market pressures, and a Kiva Fellow adapts to changing expectations. In a continuation of The Stuff Kiva Fellows Like series we hear how different fellows have adapted to their lives abroad by ‘crashing parties’ and ‘going to the Bazaar’. We hear about how practitioners are adapting finance and microinsurance products to their borrowers. Equally nimble we hear from a few borrowers and how they have expertly adapted to market pressures and changing circumstance. Microfinance is a dynamic industry by nature and like DJ or Binu or Maya Enterprise for Micro Finance, ensuring success means staying flexible and welcoming new opportunities born out of challenges. (more…)
Stuff Kiva Fellows Like #10-17
Compiled by Jim Burke, KF16, Nicaragua
We are Kiva Fellows. This is the stuff we like. Here is an insider (often critical, or satirical but always true!) view of what it means to be a Kiva Fellow and promote access to financial services around the world. From party crashing to bazaars to street food, these are the things we like and thrive on. Check out Stuff Kiva Fellows Like (SKFL) #1-9!
#10 Street Food
Mariela Cedeño, KF16, Cochabamba, Bolivia
I’m not really sure why, but there is something inherently appealing to a Kiva Fellow’s being about food that is prepared, cooked, and sold on the streets. Perhaps it’s the dubiously hygienic food preparation, the alternative cooking apparatus used to bring food to fire, or it’s ready availability and our relative laziness…wait, no, it’s actually our need to literally ‘taste’ the local culture. In our fits of street food deliriousness we are open and ready to taste all that our surroundings have to offer, however, we often find that the local fare may not quietly find a home in our stomachs. Thankfully, before leaving to our local assignments, our travel nurses reminded us that in times of intestinal woe, Cipro and other like antibiotics will be our best friend. They sometimes are, but because we are well versed in the dangers of overusing antibiotics and are haunted by nightmares of creating giant super bacteria that start kidnapping local women and children, we use them sparingly and wisely. (more…)
Second Chances (Part 1)
There’s a certain amount of introspective review that happens near the end of a Kiva Fellow’s time in the field, as previous Fellows have written about self-discoveries in spirituality, competitiveness, and self-acceptance. We’ve all gained a better worldview, certainly. Witnessing extreme poverty, adjusting to life in a developing nation and participating in the small technological miracle of connecting Kiva Lenders and Borrowers can lead to some genuine soul-searching. I’ve learned an important life lesson and, at the risk of public humiliation; but ultimately hoping to a) cement this lesson to my own heart and b) encourage future Fellows, I’ll admit that due to my own ignorance and fear, I nearly missed out on one of the greatest experiences of my life.
Continue Reading 24 November 2011 at 05:15 DJ Forza 13 comments
Questions from the Field: Why Do We Lend, What’s a Kiva Fellowship + How does Microfinance Support Green & Agricultural Development?
Compiled by Kate Bennett, KF16, Peru
Last week’s stories from the field elucidate readers on questions far and wide, and pose a few questions of their own: what is a Wandering Kiva Fellow, and is a Kiva Fellowship right for you? How can microloans support a green or agriculturally sustainable economy? In a country bouncing back from a civil war, how can international aid and microfinance help (or hurt)? What social programs are our partners supporting across the world, and how can microfinance support HIV-postive microborrowers? And finally, a question we put to you lenders: How do You Lend?
Continue Reading 21 November 2011 at 13:21 Kate Bennett 1 comment
The Double-Edged Sword: Sierra Leone’s Battle Against Poverty
By Tejal Desai, KF16, Sierra Leone
Aid: What does it mean for a country recovering from a devastating decade-long civil war that killed over 50,000 of its people? And what does it mean for microfinance organizations that aim to loosen the leash from dependency and push for sustainability? After taking an okada ride through Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, one may find the presence of international aid ubiquitous, and acting as a double-edged sword in the fight against poverty.
Continue Reading 16 November 2011 at 15:00 Tejal Desai 3 comments
Update from the Field: New Products in Microfinance, Over-Indebtedness + Transparency
Compiled by Kathrin Gerner, KF16, Rwanda
This week on the Kiva fellows blog, start out by learning about three new microfinance products – microinsurance in Indonesia, higher education loans in the Philippines and green and water loans in Kenya. Continue on to Nepal to admire the handiwork of artisan borrowers. Make your way to Ecuador to find out more about the risk of indebtedness. Share the fellows’ personal experiences with the recent elections in Nicaragua and rush hour traffic in Uganda. Finish by taking a critical look at transparency in microfinance and Kiva’s responsibility with regards to transparency.
Continue Reading 15 November 2011 at 06:44 Kathrin Gerner 3 comments
Going Green? Overcoming Cultural Barriers to Promote Green Loans (Part 2)
By Claire Markham, KF16, Kenya
In Kenya, the act of going green appears to be far less of a priority than it is in more developed green economies. In the first part of this blog series, I discussed the cultural barriers that exist in Kenya. In this second part, I attempt to answer the question of how an MFI can break through the obstacles identified in Part 1 to implement a successful green and water loan program. I certainly don’t have all of the answers, but I will describe certain strategies that can be used.
Continue Reading 14 November 2011 at 07:00 clairemarkham 5 comments
The Kampala Commute
by Andrew Huelsenbeck, K16 Kiva Fellow, BRAC Uganda
Many Kiva Fellows have some pretty crazy commutes. This is a post about what it’s like getting around town in Kampala, Uganda.
When it comes to rush hour chaos, New York City- even with its road-raging bridge-and-tunnelers- has nothing on Kampala. From about seven to nine thirty in the morning and five to eight in the evening, the city center’s tight, dusty roads transform into parking lots packed with big rigs carting petrol or bricks or other cargo; coach buses coming from or going to Kenya or Burundi or various other East African countries; all kinds of family cars; and shoddy white Chinese-made passenger vans called mutatus.
Matatus (also known as taxis) seem to be the preferred mode of transportation for the Kampala commuter for a few reasons: they are bountiful, they have routes to all corners of the city, they are cheap, and they will make pickups almost anywhere along the roadside. The second-hand vans have a lot of room—there are 3 rows of seats in the back, the front two of which have extra seats that fold down to take full advantage of the space. Usually, the seat by the sliding door in the back is occupied by a conductor, who yells out to potential passengers and collects fares. The maximum number of passengers is legally 14, but I’ve seen up to 16 or so commuters packed into a van. Many of my colleagues at BRAC use taxis to get to and from work. I use them mostly for field visits and for traveling to other cities near Kampala.
Zipping through all of the taxis and other larger vehicles are motorbikes called boda bodas, the second most popular way to commute. Drivers usually hang out together and pick up passengers from “stages” that are close to where the drivers live. The boda bodas have long, leather seats behind the drivers that can usually fit one, two (or if you’re Ugandan, three) commuters or some cargo. Boda drivers are fast, fearless and often furiously zigzag along the paths of least resistance, regardless of how precarious. This kind of driving makes commuting on a boda boda quick, but very very dangerous.
Everyone here has a boda story, and quite a few Kampalans can substantiate their tales with scars that span halfway up their arms or legs. A German friend that worked at a local hospital stopped riding boda bodas after discovering how many patients were admitted because of one bad move by a boda boda man. Despite all of this, I still ride bodas every day to get to work and to get around town. I just make sure to wear a helmet.
Besides the hand signals of a few traffic police and the loosely-adhered-to notion that cars should stay to the left, any maneuvers to hasten the commute are fair game. These include but are not limited to driving on the shoulder, driving in the wrong lane, cutting people off, “love tapping,” and good ol’ trailblazing. There are also no emissions requirements. It took me a while, but I’ve finally gotten used to the dust and the thick, purple clouds of petrol smoke that often hang above the roadways.
Kampala’s dusty roads struggle to support all this hectic traffic. They have begun to erode from constant use and frequent heavy rain, and they are now covered with potholes. The problem is so bad that some Kampalans have begun to jokingly refer to their city as “Kampothole.”
Last year, a research group actually attempted to count all the holes in the road, and discovered that the city center alone has almost 2,500 of them. Some of them are like the potholes we are used to—small enough that cars can pass over relatively unscathed; many others, however, occupy half the road and require drivers to swerve onto the shoulder or into oncoming traffic so as to avoid ruining their rides’ undercarriages.
Efforts to fix Kampala’s streets are led by the Kampala Capital City Authority. A few months back, the organization requested 345 billion Ugandan Shillings from the national government for repairing the potholes and other damage sustained by Kampala’s 900-kilometer road network. They were only granted 45 billion though, which is still a step up from the 15 billion they were working with last year.
Andrew Huelsenbeck is a Kiva Fellow currently working in Kampala with BRAC Uganda. To learn more about BRAC, please visit their Kiva Partner Page. If you are interested in helping to empower one or more of BRAC’s many wonderful entrepreneurs, you can join the Friends of BRAC Uganda lending team or check out new BRAC Uganda loans on Kiva.org. Happy lending!
“Fundación Paraguaya al Mundo”: 5K to Tanzania
By Alba Castillo, KF 16, Paraguay
Before this month, I had never ran an organized race. But when I heard of Fundación Paraguaya’s 5K to celebrate their new initiative in Tanzania, I was in! Yes, I said Tanzania – over 6,000 miles away from FP’s headquarters in Asunción.
Update from the Field: Expanding the Reach of Microfinance, Downsizing Development + Why We Kiva
Compiled by Kathrin Gerner, KF16, Rwanda
This week, you have no fewer than 14 new articles to choose from on the Kiva fellows blog: Let the fellows take you along on borrower visits across the world. Learn how Kiva field partners expand the reach of microfinance in Rwanda, fill the microfinance donut hole in Sierra Leone and improve social performance in Uganda. Find out what poverty is like in urban Tajikistan and rural Burkina Faso. Get inspired by one of the creative ways to bring renewable energy to the developing world in the form of a soccer ball. And finally, watch a video of “Why We Kiva” to get a glimpse of why Kiva fellows jump at the opportunity to be thrown half way around the world to work with Kiva’s many local field partners.
Continue Reading 31 October 2011 at 02:49 Kathrin Gerner 5 comments
Video Blog: “Why We Kiva” – Kiva Fellows Around the World
Compiled by Mariela Cedeño, KF16, Bolivia.
Wondering why Kiva Fellows jump at the opportunity to be thrown half way around the world to work with Kiva’s many local Field Parnters? Well, this little video should give you a small glimpse of “Why We Kiva”.
Mariela Cedeño is part of Kiva Fellows 16th Class, serving with CIDRE in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Cows have become her new favorite thing on earth…Llamas are also moving up the list. Please support CIDRE‘s hard-working entrepreneurs by making a loan today and join the Friends of CIDRE/Amigos de CIDRE lending team to stay involved!
La Réalité de L’Afrique
By Allison Moomey, KF16, Burkina Faso
I spent last weekend in a small village about 10km outside of Banfora (a small city about 6.5 hours from where I live in Ouagadougou) with some incredibly welcoming and generous Peace Corps volunteers. As often as I get annoyed by bugs, heat, and unreliable internet, I live a pretty charmed Burkinabé life in Ouaga. Staying in a village without electricity or running water was a wake-up call to the realities of life here. I didn’t do any of the hard work like getting water or biking products to market that most residents do each day. I lived like a pretty privileged guest. But I was still exhausted after just 48 hours. I can’t even begin to imagine what life would be like as a resident with only tôt (nutritionally empty starch) to eat, daily trips to the pump for water, and a dirt floor to sleep on every night. Although not as rural, these same challenges are a daily reality for many of Micro Start’s borrowers. The weekend was full of lessons, and recognizing my lack of hardcore-ness was only the beginning.
- The lack of infrastructure means gorgeous nature is still intact!
The Second Bottom Line and BRAC Uganda’s Gold
by Andrew Huelsenbeck, K16 Kiva Fellow, BRAC Uganda
The Second Bottom Line
One thing that’s gotten very popular with microfinance institutions (MFIs) lately is measuring success based on what is called a double bottom line. For a long time, the only bottom line for many MFIs was financials, but industry experts began to realize that looking good on paper did not amount to having any real social impact. This is why some MFIs have begun to use a second bottom line – social performance – as an additional metric for success.
What is social performance exactly? It is how an MFI is translating its core mission into practice. The success of this can be gauged in basically two ways: (1) by examining the actual impact of services on clients and (2) by examining the systems an MFI is using to optimize its impact on clients.
Among MFIs, a very common means of measuring the social impact of services is the Grameen Foundation’s Progress out of Poverty Index (PPI). The way the PPI works is by measuring the poverty levels of groups and individuals based on certain country-specific criteria like access to water, medicine, shelter etc. By examining changes in the PPI over time, MFIs are able to better determine their clients’ needs, which programs are most effective, how quickly clients leave poverty, and what helps them to move out of poverty faster.
The other main way of assessing social performance focuses less on the actual impact of services and more on MFIs’ management of the systems that optimize impact. This kind of management is commonly called social performance management (SPM). The success of SPM is based on an MFI’s ability to do mainly three things: (1) set clear social objectives, (2) monitor the progress towards achieving those objectives, and (3) use the insights from monitoring to improve overall performance and impact.
One of the major organizations responsible for establishing assessments and best practice guidelines relating to how MFIs achieve these three things is called the Social Performance Task Force (SPTF). The SPTF was birthed in 2005 when the CGAP, the Argidius Foundation and the Ford Foundation brought together leaders from various social performance initiatives in the microfinance industry to come to a consensus on a common social performance framework and an action plan to implement it. The SPTF has worked very closely with CERISE (the creator of the social performance assessment tool Kiva uses for its partners), and has recently been doing a lot of work in Uganda.
BRAC Uganda’s Gold SPM Award
Many Ugandan MFIs are part of a larger organization called the Association of Microfinance Institutions of Uganda (AMFIU). In the past year or so, AMFIU has begun to seriously encourage social performance management among its constituents. With the guidance of the SPTF and with funding from the Ford Foundation, the organization has held training sessions, published instructional guides, and not too long ago, held its first ever Social Performance Management Awards here in Kampala.
The event was huge. All of the big players were there: PRIDE, Opportunity, Finance Trust, Habitat for Humanity, EMESCO and more. The Ugandan Commissioner of Microfinance and the president of AMFIU were also in attendance and helped to present the awards to the MFIs that have really excelled in SPM. Many bronzes and silvers were handed out, but BRAC Uganda, the main MFI I am working with, took home the only gold.
Mr. Ariful Islam, the (former) Country Representative of BRAC Uganda, displays BRAC's Gold SPM Award
BRAC Uganda is an incredible organization. In just six years, with the help of the MasterCard Foundation, Kiva, Unicef and other major partners, BRAC has become a microfinance titan in Uganda. It currently has over 1,800 employees working at 114 branches, has dispersed more than $71 million in loans, and has touched the lives of nearly 2 million of Uganda’s poor.
What’s more impressive, though, is BRAC’s dedication to the second bottom line. Its mission is clear and simple: to alleviate poverty by empowering the poor to bring about change in their own lives. BRAC has achieved this not only by bringing financial services to some of the remotest regions in Uganda, but also by starting and scaling up health, agriculture, education and adolescent empowerment programs.
Many systems at BRAC are set up to ensure that clients are actually benefiting from these programs. More than half of the time, program managers are out in the field interacting with clients; the 15-member Monitoring Department continually evaluates programs to prevent mismanagement and misappropriation of funds; and BRAC Uganda’s unique Research and Evaluation Unit regularly conducts studies on the relevance and effectiveness of BRAC’s operations.
The research unit at BRAC Uganda is also currently working with AMFIU and the Grameen Foundation to promote the use of the PPI among other major MFIs in Uganda. The poverty index (or scorecard) was originally developed by a lead BRAC International researcher using national household survey data in Uganda. The Grameen Foundation adopted the idea, and worked with BRAC to update the index using newer data from many different countries. Now, the two organizations are using the PPI to improve social performance in Uganda and all over the world.
Andrew Huelsenbeck is a Kiva Fellow currently working in Kampala with BRAC Uganda. To learn more about BRAC, please visit their Kiva Partner Page. If you are interested in helping to empower one or more of BRAC’s many wonderful entrepreneurs, you can join the Friends of BRAC Uganda lending team or check out new BRAC Uganda loans on Kiva.org. Happy lending!
Downsizing Development: How a Soccer Ball Could Change the World
Lauren Barra, KF16 Kenya
As several of my colleagues have outlined here, here and here the power of simplicity is particularly evident in microfinance. These borrowers’ success makes me wonder – how else can “thinking small” translate to big changes in international development?
A few weeks ago I got my answer. My roommate Amy emailed with exciting news – “I got the internship!!” After weeks of cover letters, interviews, and language proficiency tests, Amy secured a marketing internship with sOccket, an innovative new social business focused on bringing renewable energy to the developing world. As one reporter noted,
Every great once in a while, you come across something that makes you slap your head and say, “That’s…just…brilliant.”
Continue Reading 26 October 2011 at 22:00 Lauren Barra 3 comments
The Donut Hole Conundrum + Mamoud’s Story
By Tejal Desai, KF16, Sierra Leone
Earlier this year, a Kiva fellow in KF14, David McNeill, wrote about his interaction with a Sierra Leonean taxi driver, and addressed a hot issue in microfinance: the financial donut hole. The driver asked David what type of work he was doing in Sierra Leone, and after David mentioned he was involved with microcredit, the driver expressed, “Ah, that is for women.” In his post, David explains how the driver was mostly right: why the microfinance industry concentrates on lending mostly to women, although there are still a small percentage of men who are eligible to receive loans. He continues to explain that the microfinance industry generally targets the poorest of the poor, this “bottom of the pyramid,” but leaves out those who fall in between: the people that are financially overqualified for microcredit, but too poor to receive a bank loan — resulting in the donut hole conundrum. His post makes it clear that microfinance has a long way to go until it can reach all levels of poverty. During my fellowship at BRAC Sierra Leone, however, I have learned about a particular product that is proving to be a small but effective means to fill that rather large donut hole: the small enterprise loan.
Continue Reading 24 October 2011 at 13:00 Tejal Desai 3 comments
Going the Distance: Expanding the Reach of Microfinance in Rwanda
By Whitney Webb, KF16, Rwanda
One of the biggest challenges of providing access to financial services to those living in poverty is the actual logistics of expanding the services into some of the most remote areas of the world. 92% of Rwandans live in rural areas. During my first field visit, I visited a small village near the border of Tanzania. After meeting several first time borrowers and hearing about their challenges and strong hopes for the future, we drove out onto the unpredictable mud roads.
Continue Reading 24 October 2011 at 08:49 Whitney Webb 6 comments
Updates from the Field: Green Loans, Dark Alleys + On-the-Ground Footage of it All
Compiled by Kate Bennett, KF16, Peru
Want a fresh look at Kiva clients on-the-ground? This week fellows share stories and mixed-media that bring us directly into the cities, homes and pulperías of borrowers. From the marketplace in Bolivia, to the streets of Guayaquil, to the dumps of Kenya, we learn about the challenges of working in developing countries and the strategies loan officers and Fellows can use to mitigate them. Not to mention we can see the work of Kiva fellows and Kiva Field Partners in Cambodia, Honduras and Bolivia in living color. What’s even better than reading a post by a Kiva Fellow? Seeing what we see in the field for yourself!
Continue Reading 24 October 2011 at 02:00 Kate Bennett 2 comments
Going Green? Overcoming Cultural Barriers to Promote Green Loans (Part 1)
By Claire Markham, KF16, Kenya
In the developed world, the recent increased attention to global warming and the importance of environmental preservation and restoration efforts is something that’s hard to ignore. In Kenya, I have found this is not necessarily the case in my experiences so far. When the borrowers that we work with so often have to worry about ensuring there is enough food on the table or money for school fees, adding the responsibility of being conscious of their environmental impact can be a hard notion to sell. How can an MFI break through these obstacles and implement a successful green and water loan program when so much of the population, including our borrowers, aren’t environmentally aware? This two-part blog post will attempt to answer this question.
Continue Reading 20 October 2011 at 10:15 clairemarkham 4 comments
Updates from the Field: Kiva-style Microfinance, Reggaeton + a Journey though the Commercial Jungle
This week Fellows look at the questions surrounding microfinance, or perhaps more specifically, Kiva-style microfinance: what is Christian microfinance in Rwanda? Where are these borrower profiles actually coming from? What is the everyday mentality of a Kiva micro-borrower? What’s this about Field Partners in the United States? What above-and-beyond services are our Field Partners offering Kiva Clients? And the ten-thousand dollar questions- “Why micro loans; Why small business; and Why poverty?” Through anecdotes in the field and insight from borrowers, this week Fellows try to give us a little illumination.
Continue Reading 17 October 2011 at 02:00 Kate Bennett 6 comments
