Posts filed under 'Vietnam'
The Intro
By Alex Duong, KF9, Vietnam
The CIA World Factbook provides the following details for Vietnam -
Population median age: 27.4
Percentage of population living in urban areas: 28%
Literacy rate: 90.3%
GPD growth rate: 6.2% in 2008, 8.5% in 2007
Unemployment rate: 4.7%
Leaving aside the recent inflation spike, Vietnam offers a young, competent, and dynamic environment that is ripe for putting microfinance to work.
3 comments 2 October 2009
Chia Buồn
By Hanh Tran, KF8 – Fund for Thanh Hoa Poor Women (FPW) – Vietnam
I never leave home without my camera these days. But there are many instances when I fail to pull it out in time to capture some of the interesting things I pass on the street everyday.
Peddling Bamboo
Then there are times when I am tired of filming or when I capture a moment on video and find myself debating what I should do with it. When you are interviewing people each day and they trust you with their stories, it’s a great privilege – and at times overwhelming. I had one of these moments last week.
Chief Credit Officers, Ms. Ha, whom I’ve grown very fond of, and Ms. Hanh gave me instructions to meet them at Nuoc Mam Thanh Huong for a borrower meeting. This is the area where the popular brand of nuoc mam (fish sauce) is made in Thanh Hoa. I hopped onto a Xe Om (motorbike) and told the driver to take me there. I knew immediately when we had reached the vicinity of our final destination…distinct harsh and pungent whiffs of fermented fish floated through the heavy, humid air. Nuoc mam is a staple of Vietnamese cuisine. I grew up eating many meals with nuoc mam, and still, the scent is too strong for me. I was glad that I had recently caved in and bought a facemask to avoid breathing in the dusty Thanh Hoa air…and in this case, the strong fermented fish odor.
Ms. Ha and Ms. Hoa at a borrower meeting
2 comments 20 August 2009
Sometimes it just aint enough…
by Michael Kasseris
Often times life is like a boxing match. You’re put into the ring with a challenge and you have some rounds to hash it out. Once you’re in this figurative ring you have a few options: you can get scared and jump out of the ring, you could dance around for a few rounds, or you can try to engage the challenge and see how you hold up. I know this metaphor sounds incredibly cliché, however it reminds me of a phrase our Fellows director told us way back in San Fran. To prepare us for our experiences in the “microfinance mundo,” ( I borrowed this from Susan Arthur, I really like it!) he told us that we should be ready for a few “gut punches.” (more…)
4 comments 18 August 2009
A Glimpse of the Borrowers
By Hanh Tran, KF8 – Fund for Thanh Hoa Poor Women (FPW) – Vietnam
Visiting borrowers during the past three weeks has taught me that interviews can take place just about anywhere– standing in the middle of a noisy market, sitting on very short stools near a street stall or squatting on someone’s kitchen floor.
Earlier this week, Ms. Ha, a credit officer at the Fund for Thanh Hoa Poor Women (FPW), offered to take me to three repayment meetings. I grabbed my bag – which nowadays contains my handy Flip video camera, a notepad, my pocket dictionary, and borrower group photos – and we set off.
An hour later, we found ourselves at a lively market in Dong Son District. Searching for borrowers in between the rows of colorful fruits and vegetables, fresh cut flowers and delicate china turned out to be quite the task. With Ms. Ha’s expertise, we managed to track down all six women belonging to the 11-Don Son Group.
Our next stop was to the home of a first time borrower, Ms. Phuong. Once there, I spent time with a group of four women, asking questions and listening as they gossiped and teased each other.
The final meeting for the day was at a local Women’s Union center where I was able to catch a few short interviews as group members dashed in to make their monthly repayments and rushed back to work as quickly as they came.
If I could, I would spend hours talking to each borrower. I realize the questions that I am able to ask during the short amount of time I have with the women only offers a glimpse into their lives – a small chapter of the full story. Yet, in those few moments, there is a connection. The hours pass by quickly and at the end of the day, I have footage, pictures and pages of notes. Here are a two of their stories.
(more…)
6 comments 16 July 2009
Leap of faith
by Michael Kasseris
There wasn’t much wind blowing through Hanoi that morning. The air was heavy and humid, like every step I took was like walking through a pool of water. It was my first morning in Hanoi and I needed to cross the street my hotel was on to hail a taxi. As I stepped closer to the edge of the sidewalk I noticed how fast the air was moving across my face. A swarm of motorbikes, taxis and trucks racing through the street swept the air past me and blew a cloud of dust in my eyes. Before I knew it my chances of crossing the street were over and the violent current of traffic seemed to have no end, or so I thought. (more…)
6 comments 6 July 2009
Close to Home
Total chaos can be beautiful. Horns honk at me from left to right and the vibrations jump from one ear to the other. A river of motorbikes (xe oms) race past my taxi window. There appears to be no traffic lights, no speed limits and few rules. I stop to listen and start to see life—life as it is lived in Hanoi, Vietnam.
Having spent some time in Hanoi as an undergraduate, the bustling sounds of the Old Quarter are familiar and comforting. The streets lined with booming businesses of every sort are images that come to mind when I think about microfinance and entrepreneurship in Vietnam.
As I left Hanoi for Thanh Hoa, where I will be based as a fellow during the next three months, I wondered what entrepreneurship would look like in Vietnam’s second poorest province. During the foggy morning as my train rushed by brilliant shades of green across Vietnam’s lush rice paddies, I could not help but be captivated by the tranquil countryside. It’s raining as I leave the train station and my first sight of Thanh Hoa is a gray, damp and serene scene. (more…)
5 comments 22 June 2009
Microfinance and the Millennium Development Goals
Microfinance, while not the cure-all tool for development, is a very powerful tool for poverty reduction in the developing world. We’ve all heard the effect it has on poverty as portrayed in numerous academic studies and from sources like Muhammad Yunus. Because of my infatuation with microfinance I started wondering what other impact microfinance has had on development issues such as inequality. After a quick search on UC Berkeley’s academic journal search tool I only found one (one?!!) article which even mentioned inequality. This was evidence to me that microfinance is still in its infancy as an academic subject.
Prior to becoming a Kiva Fellow I decided that I wanted to go back to graduate school and study economic development with an emphasis in microfinance, if at all possible. Because I discovered the lack of scholarly attention towards microfinance and its impact towards other development issues I decided that I wanted to study what impact microfinance has on all aspects to the UN’s Millennium Development Goals besides just poverty reduction.
The Millennium Development Goals are eight international development goals that 192 United Nations member states have agreed to achieve by the year 2015. While it is very debatable that the goals can be achieved by that date, they are nonetheless goals worth fighting towards for a long time to come. The eight goals (which have more specifics than shown below) are as follows:
1) Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. 2) Achieve universal primary education. 3) Promote gender equality and empower women. 4) Reduce child mortality. 5) Improve maternal health. 6) Combat HIV/Aids, malaria, and other diseases. 7) Ensure environmental sustainability. 8) Develop a global partnership for development.
My question for these goals is simple: does microfinance have a significant impact on any of these goals besides poverty reduction? My theory, as of now, is that yes it does impact at least five, maybe even seven of these goals; however I need to run statistical models to test the significance. In short I believe that since most clients are women, goal 3 has a major impact and since a goal of microfinance is increasing credit to hopefully increase family income, the other goals will be affected as well. Think about it like this: extra money means maybe another child will get to continue their education, or there is now money available to afford the medicines required to fight a child’s malaria bout to keep them alive past the age of five (goals 4 and 6), etc., etc…
As an anecdotal case, here in Vietnam with my MFI SEDA, I know that the vast majority of borrowers are female. According to the women I have interviewed, the majority have seen an increase in their standard of living and income (whether this is due to a real increase in income or income simply mirroring inflation is another topic that needs to be studied) and many who still have school age children use their extra income to pay for their kids tuition fees and hope that their children will be able to go to university and further increase their standards of living, especially for eldest sons (who take care of the parents when they get older!). Furthermore, many of the women now have extra income to also buy medicines if their children become sick. Just from my interactions with the borrowers here, I see a potential impact going beyond just poverty reduction…I see Millennium Goals 1-6 being affected. Thus there is reason for further study into this impact!
To learn more about the Millennium Development Goals, please check out the MDG Wikipedia page. If you’re interested in lending to SEDA borrowers to help them have an impact on the Millennium Development Goals, please check out SEDA’s fundraising page!
4 comments 19 May 2009
Kiva Fellows IN the Field – Part 1
According to the author of Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell, Asians are typically better at math because rice farming is so much more labor and time intensive than all other forms of agriculture. While we don’t necessarily agree with the math side of his argument, we agree with the difficulty of rice farming.
Many of the Vietnamese Kiva borrowers are themselves rice farmers. In order to appreciate and gain a sense of what the life of a Vietnamese Kiva borrower is like, we, the two Kiva Fellows in Vietnam, took the opportunity to spend a day in a typical borrower’s shoes, or lack thereof.
The rice paddy in the distance is calling out our names...
After spending two hours literally in the field bending over in the baking sun and in ankle deep mud and water, we realized that we had not become experts in rice farming techniques. To make this point clear, we couldn’t even tell the difference between the weeds we were supposedly looking for and the actual rice; the grass had evolved to look almost exactly like the rice! This is just one of the difficulties that the farmers face everyday in the field. (We haven’t even mentioned the exact science of fertilizing and watering let alone the creepy crawlies everywhere)
For us, we could barely comprehend the effort it takes for the farmers to simply put rice on their own tables, let alone the fact that the borrowers have other job duties as well. To supplement their own income, many of the farmers take up Kiva loans to run micro-enterprises such as selling fruit and vegetables at market or raising and selling animals. Simply put, being a Vietnamese farmer isn’t as clean-cut as one may think, and we found this out the hard way…
Bernice and Nate, Kiva Fellows IN the Field
Please continue on to Kiva Fellows IN the Field – Part 2
5 comments 27 March 2009
Kiva Fellows IN the field – part 2
(cont’d from Kiva Fellows IN the field – Part 1)
10 comments 27 March 2009
An Atypical Borrower: From Riches to Rags
Ms. Nguyen Thuy Minh, a Kiva borrower with SEDA
One of my main roles as a fellow with SEDA in Vietnam is interviewing borrowers and then writing a journal update so that lenders can see how the borrower is doing. I have many questions that I like to ask most of the borrowers and one of my favorites is quite simple: What did you do before you started this particular business? This question is great because it really helps me learn about the person I’m interviewing; their previous jobs tell a lot about them. Take for example Ms. Nguyen Thuy Minh.
Ms. Nguyen, 45, currently runs a mobile phone business which she started four years ago and helps her daughter-in-law raise animals. Six years ago her husband was killed in an accident and that accident changed her life as she knew it. When most people think of microfinance they think of a poor person trying to empower themselves out of poverty and thus we assume that person was always poor and that microfinance is the opportunity they never had before. Ms. Nguyen’s case, however, is completely the opposite.
Prior to her husband’s accident, Ms. Nguyen’s job was running a confectionary factory for 16 years with her husband which employed over 60 workers—now that’s a favorable impact on a community, a locally owned business which creates jobs! She and her family were very well off until her husband’s death. For some reason or another his death meant the closure of the factory (I didn’t want to pry into all of her personal details about the accident and accompanying results but I assume her husband had many debts) and quickly propelled Ms. Nguyen and her family into the type of poverty they had never known before.
The location that Ms. Nguyen and other borrowers in her community make payments on their loans.
As Ms. Nguyen described her situation, she said her best option was to start a mobile phone business in her hamlet but it meant that she had to work harder than before for less money to simply get by. To help her business along and to help begin increasing her standard of living she decided to apply for a micro-loan (before, with the factory, her credit was good enough to get loans from traditional banks). Her loan has since helped increase her daily income and has allowed her to purchase more new phones in bulk, thus reducing her overall costs.
Ms. Nguyen’s story is a perfect example of an atypical borrower, but nonetheless microfinance has become a valuable tool for her. With that in mind, I think her role as Group Leader is also valuable to microfinance in her community because she can share her knowledge of business management with her other group members and possibly with many others in her community. In fact, one of my goals now is to see if Ms. Nguyen could possibly run a work-shop on business management with the other SEDA borrowers in her community which perfectly answers another question I like to ask borrowers: what impact do you and your business have on your community? And my oh my, what a potential impact Ms. Nguyen can have!
Add comment 23 March 2009
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