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.

My name is Alex and I will be the only 9th class Kiva Fellow in Vietnam (starting in December).  Without a doubt, Kiva continues a series of amazing curveballs that life tosses at me.  I would never have dreamed of leaving work and all that is familiar in Southern California for this.  However, Kiva somehow appeared in Google results one day as I was scaling the consulting corporate ladder.

Training was just completed last week.  After applying for the fellowship nearly five months ago, the duties have now been bestowed.  The depth of character within each member of Kiva Fellow’s 9th class is humbling.  Not everyone is a financial guru or video-making whizz but therein lies our strength.  To see such a variety of backgrounds yet know that each individual can equally carry out Kiva’s mission while abroad is incredible.  Make sure to stop by frequently and watch our journeys unfold.  I have no doubt the stories we post will be genuine and passionate.

Lastly, I want to thank both Scott and Mike of Infusion Lounge for providing space to host my fundraiser in San Francisco.  Their generosity is greatly appreciated.  /ALEX

Alex Duong is the first Kiva Fellow (KF9) working with TYM Fund in Hanoi, Vietnam.
Click the links for info on TYM Fund & my personal blog

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

Ms. Ha flagged me down from the side of the road and led me to a small house with a front room that doubled as a garage. A small white car took up the majority of the space so we huddled on red plastic stools in a corner. Several members in this group sell nuoc mam and shrimp sauce (mam tom), including Ms. Nguyen Thi Thanh. Through the other borrowers, I learned that Ms. Thanh had passed away several months ago. After the meeting ended, Ms. Ha and I walked two blocks to Ms. Thanh’s fish sauce stand and met her daughter, Ms. Huong. She is now managing her mother’s fish sauce stand and will be responsible for paying back the loan from FPW.

Ms. Huong agreed to be filmed for an interview. I pulled out the Flip and began asking my usual questions…
What was the loan money spent on? Purchasing fish sauce for resale at the market.
How much are your profits? One jug of fish sauce brings in a profit of 5,000 VND ($0.18 USD). On a good day, Ms. Huong can sell 10 liters a day for a total profit of 50,000 VND ($3 USD).
How many people are in your family? Ms. Huong has a 6-year-old son and 21-year-old daughter who is currently attending university in Hanoi.

…and so it went….until the final question: what are your dreams for the future?

This is what she says…

Then, Ms. Huong’s eyes became soft with sadness. This completely caught me by surprise. Dreams usually generate smiles. She looked away and told me that her family has encountered much hardship since the passing of her mother. Her mother received a monthly retirement stipend of 1,300,000 VND ($76 USD). With a strong belief that education would draw their family out of poverty, Ms. Huong’s mother dedicated all of her retirement stipend and some of her profits from the nuoc mam stand to pay for her granddaughter’s university fees. Ms. Huong said that it has been difficult to pay for the children’s school fees with only one salary – she is concerned about their future. I could see through these words that it was the memory of her mother combined with the family’s current financial struggles that brought tears to Ms. Huong’s eyes. I turned off the camera. I could not imagine grieving the loss of a parent and worrying about how the loss will impact family finances at the same time. It must feel like the weight of the world is on your shoulders.

Ms. Huong at her mother's market stand

Chia buồn is a Vietnamese saying that means, “to share sadness.” The words are said in a low tone and the phrase itself sounds sad. In Vietnam, people will offer to share another person’s grief and sadness. Chia buồn. My imagination tells me it’s like splitting up the cloud of sadness into puzzle pieces and distributing them across the universe, until the pain no longer exists. Of course, that is not reality. Despite anyone offering to chia buồn, Ms. Huong’s sadness, just like yours and mine, cannot be easily delegated to others. I suppose then, it’s more of a reminder to someone that they are not alone and that in the bigger picture, we are all one people. Then perhaps, stories that connect us to one another, no matter the distance, help us chia buồn.

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.” When I heard this I wasn’t really surprised, I knew that things out in the field wouldn’t be easy. I knew that we all would have our fair share of adversity. I mentally prepared myself to expect the unexpected and for things to not always happen according to plan.

hours of highway on the bak of a moto...

Soon after settling in at the head office in Hanoi, I was eager to meet more clients and visit them at their place of business. All worries and various setbacks that happened to me so far would soon wash away as I met my first clients. I didn’t mind that the trip there took over 3 hours in a cramped bus with the thermometer hovering above ninety degrees. I couldn’t wipe off the grin I had on my face as we pulled up to the first client’s house. The client came to the gate and we explained why we had come to visit her. With a friendly smile she invited me in, introduced me to her family and offered me a delicious cup of tea. Everything was going well during the interview and then it happened, my first gut punch.  POW! Right to the gut, I was down and the referee was already giving me the ten count. The question I asked her was about how the loan has changed her life and if there has been any positive change since she has expanded her business. She replied emphatically, “No!” She even told me that her loan was too small to make any real changes in her life and that she needed double the loan if she was to have any impact on her children’s lives. After a couple minutes of Vietnamese back and forth my interpreter explained to me that although she was very happy with the loan and that it did help her pay for things, she still didn’t have enough to see serious changes happen in her life. The client then explained to us that although she could vary her family’s diet every week, she still didn’t make enough to buy meat or fish, or save enough to send her children to a university. I felt confused and frustrated. I knew that as a Kiva Fellow I wouldn’t be hearing dramatic stories every time I met a client, but I didn’t believe that I would have a client tell me that their loan hasn’t helped much.

an interview at a client's home

After finishing the interview I contemplated what had gone wrong and why this woman hadn’t seen much change in her life. As we rode on the motorbike to the next client I felt a bit defeated. Even some of the street dogs we passed seemed to stop and give me a look of disappointment.

the look

Fortunately enough for me my MPM ( Kiva’s partner manager in Asia and my fellows manager) was coming to the office this week and I explore the issue with some of the management in the office before I came to any conclusions. What I realized was that things weren’t as black and white as I thought they were. Although SEDA was a great organization and was expanding it still faced many challenges that so many other MFI’s face all over the world. They still have to manage their portfolio and develop solid lending practices for each one of their clients. There were many challenges that SEDA was still dealing with which kept them from lending larger loans like some of their competitors. Vietnam also has very different regulations from many other countries which keep a microfinance institution from lending as freely as they would like to. Essentially SEDA understood the problem of small loan sizes for their clients and is working to improve on it, however it is better for them to loan what they can and maintain their risk mitigation strategies than to create a situation which may compromise their lending ability all together. Also many of the clients that had complained about loan size had just recently started borrowing and they had to build their credit with small loans before they were considered for larger ones. When I spoke to some of my friends in other organizations I was reassured that many MFI’s were dealing with this challenge and that it was a matter of time before they could grow to their full potential.

It is important to understand that progress is being made! Whether it is because clients who are borrowing are now learning about practical business principles and how to manage a loan, or that the MFI is working out bugs in its operation model, progress continues. Even though many of the clients have been working hard to pay back some of their loans they are still very new to the credit system and they are learning about good borrowing behavior. Although some clients may not have realized it, many displayed a new understanding of the credit market. One could see the difference in behavior from a client on their third cycle to a client who just received their first loan. The older clients understood the difference between rates and repayment schedules. Experienced clients could explain why they like certain methods of repayment over others and some even kept track of their cash flows on ledgers, which they were always happy to display.  I was excited to see that in some communities where SEDA had built a presence, principles of sound business and finance had taken root and taught business owners how to leverage their debt to improve their lives.

After I had considered the perspectives from the clients all the way through to SEDA’s management I felt more at ease with the progress of microfinance in Vietnam. I understood that although some clients didn’t feel a tangible improvement in their life, there were many positive improvements to the general financial system which previously didn’t even exist in these communities. I understood that there were still many clients who considered the changes in their lives to be very significant. A client I met last week told me her son might be attending a medical school if he passes the entrance exam this fall. She told me that another successful loan cycle would be enough to help pay for the tuition he needed if he gets in. At the end of the interview she gave me a wink and told me that she was confident everything would fall into place. I guess I learned to carry that confidence about the progress I’m witnessing in the poorest areas of Vietnam and engage the fight worth fighting, even if it means hitting the mat a few times on the way.

Michael Kasseris will be working with SEDA in Vietnam this summer for 12 weeks. If you would like to learn more about SEDA or lend to one of their borrowers click here.

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.

Meet Ms. Lien

When Ms. Lien told me that she makes “than” I had to dig in my bag for my pocket dictionary. In the time it took me to find the translation, Ms. Lien had brought a bucket of coal blocks to show me what “than” was.

Ms. Lien is 29 years old and the youngest member of her group. She tells me that everything she does is for her two children. Ms. Lien and her assistant can make up to 1,000 blocks of coal in one day. The recent loan from FPW helped pay for repairs to the machine that they use. On rainy days, the business comes to a halt since the coal needs to dry in the sun. On a good day, the couple can sell 300 blocks for a profit of 60,000 VND ($3 USD). A woman of few words, Ms. Lien pulls me outside to demonstrate how the coal blocks are actually made.

As Ms. Ha and I watched Ms. Lien work with the sun beaming down on her hat, I thought about how the profits from Ms. Lien’s business might help to provide more opportunities for her two young children in the future. We said our goodbyes and Ms. Lien continued her work. You never know when the rain will come.

Meet Ms. Trinh

We found Ms. Trinh sitting in between a stall lined with assorted spices and a stand selling sets of baby clothing. Interviews at the market are some of the most interesting that I have had. It’s amazing to watch the women in action as they answer questions and make change for customers at the same time. Talk about multi-tasking!

Ms. Trinh at her market stall

With her youthful energy, Ms. Trinh tells me that she “sells many many things!” At 60 years old, she recently expanded her stall with an impressive variety of kitchenware – pots and pans, fish sauce (nuoc mam), teapots, spices, mops, rice cookers, scissors, chopsticks, dishwashing liquid…the list goes on…

Ms. Trinh says that the market is like her second home. She has no intentions of retiring any time soon because her profits are needed to pay for her daughter’s tuition and lodging fees at Hanoi University. Ms. Trinh estimates that her monthly profit has grown from 1,500,000 VND ($84 USD) to 1,800,000 VND ($101 USD) since taking out her first loan with FPW.

Usually, when I ask borrowers about their dreams, there is a moment of hesitation. This was not true with Ms. Trinh. Full of energy, she tells me, “I want to travel.” I’ve heard this answer before, but then she adds, “to the places where people have given loans. I would go there to say thank you.”

I get to hear these sentiments day in and out – and those thank yous are truly meant for all the people who show their support through lending. So until Ms. Trinh makes her way to your neck of the woods, I’d like to send her message of appreciation to you. Thank you Kiva Lenders!

Hanh Tran is serving as a Kiva Fellow in Vietnam with the Fund for Thanh Hoa Poor Women (KF8). Click here to view currently fundraising loans from the Fund for Thanh Hoa Poor Women. Join the Vietnam Critical Mass lending team to support entrepreneurs in Vietnam!

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. Next to me an old lady balancing two enormous piles of fresh pineapples and lychees across her shoulders just stepped down onto the street and without looking up, miraculously reached the other side. I was amazed that she came out alive, how did she not get hit by any of the vehicles? As I waited for a break in the traffic, another woman walking with her child stepped down onto the street in front of me and in what seemed like a suicide attempt, made it through alive on the other side of the street. I was baffled. There was no way I was going to be able to cross here. As the taxis on the other side began to lose patience they drove off looking for another customer. I was going to be late. I walked up and down the street as if I was going to discover some invisible bridge to take me to the other side, yet there was no break in the death race in front of me.

...one of the reckless motobike drivers

Then as I began to lose hope, a tall man with what sounded like an Australian accent looked at me and laughed. He also stepped down and started walking through the traffic that raced past him like a swarm of bees, but before he made it halfway across he looked back and yelled at me “You just go!” You just go? Was he crazy? I didn’t know if the locals used some secret hand gesture to cross the street or knew of some unspoken pattern in the traffic but surely I couldn’t “just go.” Or maybe I could? With my eyes half closed and my limbs as close to the center of my body, I gingerly stepped down into the street. I didn’t bother looking at the traffic coming straight for me but instead looked forward at the other side of the street and kept walking. When I stepped back up onto the other side of the sidewalk I couldn’t help but think of those safari programs on TV that follow that lone zebra as it tries to cross the crocodile infested waters. After I finished counting for all my toes, I realized that it took a leap of faith to get me across the street and that I didn’t need to be worried. I just needed to go. Sometimes things in a new place may not seem as organized and as sterile as one might be used to in their normal environment. That’s something I have been reminding myself this past week in Hanoi and as I get situated at my MFI, that some things just take a leap of faith. It was a leap of faith which made me leave my “great” job back home in finance and board a plane to Hanoi. It was the same leap of faith which some of the first micro lenders had when they decided to support some women in poverty start a business. It was a leap of faith which brought these new entrepreneurs to believe that they too could be successful business owners in a developing economy. I will be working with SEDA , which stands for Center of Small Enterprise Development Assistance and is a part of Binh Minh a larger NGO here in Vietnam focused on Microfinance. The staff here has been extremely hospitable and I have already made friends with some of them. They particularly like bringing me to lunch in a group and see what food I will be too scared to eat which I am proud to say has never happened, even lunch can sometimes be a leap of faith.

Michael Kasseris will be working with SEDA in Vietnam this summer for 12 weeks. If you would like to learn more about SEDA or lend to one of their borrowers click here.

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.

I did not know how quickly that initial portrait I painted of microfinance in Vietnam would change. The day before the start of my fellowship, I learned that some family members who I had never met before live in the Sao Vang district, a 1.5 hour bus ride from Thanh Hoa City where I am located. When I got to their house, I was greeted by a family of cows in the front yard. Later in the day, my aunt told me she took out a loan of 8 million VND ($450 USD) to help buy the mother cow. “A loan for the poor,” she said. I asked for details. She went on to describe how she sells vegetables at the market daily, making $1.90 USD on a good day. Due to her husband’s illness, he is unable to work regularly. She explained that the cows are easy for him to maintain, as all he has to do is cut grass for them to eat. Each year, the mother cow can give birth to one calf, resulting in a profit of approximately $150 USD per year.

The cows in the front yard!

When I began this fellowship, I was not aware of how close to home the impact of microfinance would be felt. My aunt is a borrower of a government microfinance loan. She does not consider herself an entrepreneur and has no intentions of opening a business. Simply put – she took the loan out of necessity. The additional income from the sale of cattle has allowed her to maintain a more stable family life and put food on the table during those times when her sales at the market are low. Thus, my image of microfinance and entrepreneurship in Vietnam as being merely busy city shops has been wiped away. I am so looking forward to filling in the colors of this new picture as I meet women borrowers from the Fund for Thanh Hoa Poor Women.

I consider it a matter of chance that I was born in the U.S. and given all the opportunity in the world. What an honor it is to have this opportunity to serve as a Kiva Fellow in Vietnam!

Hanh Tran is serving as a Kiva Fellow in Vietnam with the Fund for Thanh Hoa Poor Women (KF8). Join the Vietnam Critical Mass lending team to support entrepreneurs in Vietnam.

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!

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

(cont’d from Kiva Fellows IN the field – Part 1)

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!

I’m already four weeks into my fellowship and as I anticipated, it’s been full of surprises!

A consultant by training, I’m in my element when I’m in an office, laptop in hand and armed with my shortcut keys. This is why I jumped at the chance to conduct my first Kiva training session. We pulled together a Power Point presentation, drafted and translated ‘cheat sheets’ and were ready to go. …or so we thought… Talk about an emotional journey!

The day started well with,

Enthusiasm: Granted, I was probably the only one who was excited for the session to begin but I Fn+F10-ed and the presentation was up and running. Then came…
Anxiety: “Wait! That’s the search bar not the address bar.”
Chaos: Forgetting to translate the calendar months could have resulted in a mad grab-bag of dates had it not been for a quick cross-reference table and printer.
Frustration: Taking up 3 computers for the better part of the day in an office with limited resources was not spectacularly well received by senior management…
Relief: By the end of the day, everyone got the hang of it and profiles proliferated!

Needless to say, it was a most educational day and despite the shaky emotional foundation, it wasn’t drastically different from the countless office days I’d experienced before.

Contrast this with the unfamiliar field. I find myself on the back of a motorcycle (breaking the only rule my dad ever gave me) and traveling to the community house that doubles as the FPW repayment center once a month. I realize that I have left my office sanctuary and <<CTRL+Z>> is not going to save me. I can’t take back the loud crashing noise of my motorcycle helmet falling to the floor or rescind my confusing question of “do you enjoy your job”. I don’t know much about animal husbandry or agriculture or raising a family, and I can’t quickly google ‘Le Mon’ to figure out what it is. …but somehow, it doesn’t matter. The women welcome my questions and share details of their lives. I hear stories of strength and hard work – hauling fertilizer to and from train cars certainly puts my ‘long hours’ into perspective; of sacrifice – expensive medical trips to get better treatment for their children; and most often, I hear of success. “Increased earnings, new TVs, demand for more loans!” There is definitely no shortage of demand for microcredit here, and to me that is a sign that there is a need being fulfilled and that these loans are working!

No shortcut key could’ve taught me that.

Join the Vietnam Critical Mass Lending Team
See loans currently being fundraised by the Fund for Thanh Hoa Poor Women

In Vietnam, the beginning of spring is marked by a very large festival called the Tet Festival where the symbol of the Lunar New Year and spring awakening is the arrival of the blooming kumquat and peach trees. Unfortunately, I missed this festival by just a week or so before arriving in Hanoi. While I missed the actual Tet festival, the festivities do not stop that soon: every year for one or two months after Tet, Buddhist pilgrims (85% of the population of Vietnam identifies their religious beliefs as Buddhist, whether they practice often or not) flock to the Perfume Pagoda, aka Chùa Hương in Vietnamese.

The throngs of boats waiting to take pilgrims to the mountain.

My guide book says that the Perfume Pagoda—which is 60 km south west of Hanoi in picturesque limestone mountains and is actually a large cave—is one of the prime places to visit in the Hanoi area, but warns about visiting it for two months after Tet due to the crowds. I must say, the warning was completely justified! Nonetheless, this was a cultural experience I am glad I partook in.

Prior to my trip to the Perfume Pagoda, my co-workers at the MFI SEDA/Binh Minh asked me for 70,000 VND which is roughly $4. I was unsure why they wanted this money, maybe it was for lunch for the week? I soon found out that they actually wanted me to join them on their annual pilgrimage to the Perfume Pagoda to pray for wealth, health, and prosperity for the new lunar year. We left on a Sunday at 5 AM, for a long but incredible day.

After a sleepless 1.5 hour bus ride to the town of My Doc, we finally arrived at the river that would take us to the foot of the mountains. The town was crawling with people and vendors of cheap trinkets and stacks of small denomination bills which are both used as offerings at the various temples, altars, and pagodas. I could sense the urgency and the excitement in my co-workers who were non-stop chattering in Vietnamese. As I looked around the town upon arrival I was overwhelmed by the mass of people yet I could not help but feel slightly lonely because of the language barrier. Nonetheless the staff at SEDA/Binh Minh did everything they could once we were on the river to explain to me what the day would be like and the purpose of the festivities.

To get the festivities started we purchased a whole cooked chicken, plopped him/her on a pile of sticky rice, stuck stacks of money under it and added a few flowers. We then marched the chicken and a platter of fruit into the first temple and put it on the altar with incense burning everywhere. Everyone, by this point, was praying for wealth, health and prosperity in general. I assumed this was an offering but as quickly as it began the chicken and fruit platters were back out the door of the temple. Apparently they were lunch for the boat ride ahead…

A My Doc woman rowing effortlessly.

The boat ride lasted about one hour and I was placed squarely in the middle, probably so I wouldn’t fall into the water. The boat was rowed by a small but buff woman who steered the row boat with professional poise, which in my opinion was incredible! We had at least 16 people in our boat and she propelled us through the water without a hint of being tired and with extreme ease. Apparently most of the women in the town of My Doc, aged 13 to about 65, row the throngs of pilgrims up the river every year, all year long. Not a single obese one amongst them.

The scenery on the river was literally awe inspiring. Too bad it was cloudy, because I bet with a blue sky and a blazing sun the limestone and lush green mountains would be even more phenomenal. Despite the clouds it was still pretty. As our boat made its way amongst the other boats the staff of SEDA/Binh Minh broke out into traditional Vietnamese songs until we made it to the docking point where the hike up the mountain would begin.

The hike up to the Perfume Pagoda is several kilometers and quite steep. It doesn’t make it easy that the stone-paved path has been trekked on so many times that the rocks have been burnished smooth and thus are insanely slippery; I lost my footing too many times to count. Unfortunately, all along the path the view was blocked by more vendors and food and drink stalls (which were actually quite necessary due to the heat). I would have liked to have seen the view, but it makes sense for the vendors to be there: with the thousands upon thousands of people walking by it’s a small entrepreneurs dream to have such easy access to a market like this one! I would not be surprised if some of the stall owners had micro-finance loans of their own, from Kiva or any other organization.

The SEDA/Binh Minh staff before the hike up to the cave.

With roughly 1/3 of a mile to the cave, our ability to walk normally stopped. Suddenly I was at a rock concert back home: we were in a mosh pit. The throngs of pilgrims had finally all converged on one narrow path to the pagoda with intense pushing and shoving. I swear, at one point my feet were no longer on the ground and my body movement was only because of the sway of the crowd! Fortunately for me, I was a head taller than everybody so I was able to get fresh air, while everyone else must have been suffocating. Being a head taller was also useful for the staff of SEDA/Binh Minh to keep track of me and each other as I was a very visible landmark amongst the sea of people. In fact I was called a ‘hero’ by them since I was able to make my way through everyone easier and thus opening up a path for them behind me!

The pagoda itself was breathtaking. After walking down about 120 stairs I found myself in a wide-open cavern with a giant pillar of stone in the middle. Behind the pillar was a grotto with several Buddhist altars where people were doing a number of things including praying, trying to catch ‘lucky water’, aka drops from stalactites, and stuffing money into fissures of the rocks (a sacrifice in hopes that wealth will surely be had this new year!). The intensity of the spirituality simply washed over everything in the cave. I was left without words as I took it all in.

Entering the mouth of the Perfume Pagoda.

While I was literally one of only four recognizable foreigners I saw the entire time (I only saw the other foreigners on my way back down the mountain) amongst the at least 100,000 people, I would surely visit it again during this time of the year. If I could, I would edit the guide books to say “do not visit the Perfume Pagoda for the first two months after Tet, unless you want a truly unforgettable cultural experience that you’ll probably keep with you for the rest of your life.” Furthermore, I am glad that I was able to share this experience with everyone at SEDA/Binh Minh because now I truly feel like I have been accepted by my co-workers!

If you are interested in lending to Vietnamese borrowers please join the Vietnam Critical Mass lending team!

Also, please  lend to any and all SEDA/Binh Minh borrowers!

My name is Nathan and I would like to introduce myself to the Kiva community as one of the members of KF7. I am stationed in Hanoi, Vietnam with the local MFI SEDA. I am extremely grateful for this amazing opportunity and strongly urge anyone who is considering applying as a Kiva Fellow to do so immediately!

A typical Hanoian street scene.

The well-known idiom ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ perfectly explains my first several days in Vietnam. While I had many fears prior to arriving in Vietnam including safely crossing the hectic and mob-like streets of Hanoi (I even was hit by a passing motorbike on the sidewalk one day and the previous day I saw a city bus T-bone another motorbike!), I am no longer afraid that there are no deserving recipients of microfinance here in Hanoi.

Before arriving in Vietnam, several previous fellows told me that in terms of Kiva placements, Hanoi is a 5-star rated fellowship. The city looks and feels like a modern city in all aspects including hotels that are budget to posh, an extensive public transportation system, large businesses and high-rise buildings on many blocks, and young, trendy, and fashionable people everywhere. The house that I live in even has high-speed wireless Internet, a luxury the vast majority of Kiva Fellows will not even come close to having at home let alone in Internet cafes.

This so-called 5-star rating made me question whether microfinance was actually all that necessary in Hanoi and the surrounding communities. After my first day in Hanoi I still felt this way after looking to purchase a mobile phone. After being pointed in a direction to find a phone by a long-time expat from Australia (maybe this was my first mistake!), I went into a very fancy looking store with an all-glass front with automatic sliding doors. Inside, the clientele was 100% Vietnamese with many of the people wearing what appeared to be designer clothing and sporting cool and trendy-looking haircuts. The cheapest phone that I found in the store was around $40, with prices ranging all the way up to $600+ for iPhones and various Blackberry phones.

My initial fear about microfinance in Hanoi however has turned out to be unfounded. Without even having a chance to settle down and get over my jet lag I went right to work as a Kiva Fellow my second day. After taking a hired taxi to SEDA’s branch offices on the outskirts of Hanoi and beyond I realized that there are in fact many deserving recipients of microloans here in the Hanoi surrounds.

Bac Ninh: The location of a SEDA branch office.

In one village that I visited near SEDA’s Bac Ninh branch office, I met my first group borrowing team. The village was small and had open raw-sewage drains along the tiny road in front of the small retail shop of one of the women. Nearby several small children were playing next to dogs that were foraging in piles of litter. The five women that I met live very different lives than many of the residents of Hanoi-proper, and in my humble opinion are using their microloans to attempt to better their opportunities. In fact, when asked what their hopes were for their futures they all said the same thing: get larger future loans so that they can improve their businesses even more so that hopefully they can send their children to university to provide the children better job opportunities than they have. Very inspiring if you ask me!

Lesson #1 learned in Hanoi: you can’t judge a book by its cover!

To learn more about SEDA, please click HERE. If you would like to lend to woman like this group near Bac Ninh, Vietnam, please check out SEDA’s currently fundraising borrowing groups by clicking HERE.

You will not find much about it in the Lonely Planet but Thanh Hóa, Vietnam, is where I will be spending the next few months as a Kiva Fellow.  Its dirt roads, paper-based systems and road-side street kitchens are a far cry from the corporate culture that I am familiar with, but I am excited to see what the next few months will hold.

Thanh Hóa is the fourth largest (by area) and second poorest province in Vietnam, with over 30% of the households considered poor. Kiva’s field partner here, the Fund for Thanh Hóa Poor Women, has been in operation for over 10 years and continues to grow in size and influence, opening a new branch just this past November in the Hậu Lộc district.

Although I have only been here for a few (linguistically challenged) days, we have hit the ground running and I am trying to ramp up as quickly as I can.  (Easier said than done when there isn’t a wikipedia page on hand.)   What I have found so far is a great passion for change and a general consensus that with the strong work ethic ingrained in its people, Vietnam’s economy will grow. The only question is how quickly and at what cost.

I will keep you posted on what I find, but in the meantime… Tôi cần thực hành tiếng Việt!

Note: In a future blog, Nathan, Kiva Fellow based in Hanoi, and I will be delving into the differences between microfinance in Hanoi and Thanh Hóa. Please leave us any specific questions you would like us to look into (e.g. how does the cost of living differ?) by leaving us comments. Cám ơn!

Join the ‘Vietnam Critical Mass’ lending team!

Yesterday I met Mr. and Mrs. Phung, their two children and their granddaughter. The Phungs run a bicycle repair shop. It is a small shop on a partially paved, pot-holed street on the outskirts of Thanh Hoa City, Vietnam (150 kilometers south of the capital, Hanoi). Had it been a few houses further down the street, Mr. and Mrs. Phung would have enjoyed views over the rice paddies.

Bicycles are repaired on what would be the pavement, if one existed. As with many homes, the front room not only acts as a sort of living room but also as a place of business; in this case a store room for bicycle parts. Bicycle tires and tubes hang from the ceiling and brakes, brake cables, pedals, baskets, etc. are stored in cubby holes on the wall. Even with the entryway wide open, one’s eyes take a moment to adjust to the dark inside.

Mr. and Mrs. Phung had been warned in advance of this foreigner’s arrival and welcomed me into their home. We were there with one of the Fund for Thanh Hoa Poor Women’s loan officers to distribute a group loan.

While each borrower was lent almost 3.1 million VND (~ US$181), they all said they wanted to borrow much more but couldn’t. I’ve heard this complaint many times as I usually ask borrowers what they like most about the Fund for Thanh Hoa Poor Women (“FPW”) and where they’d like to see improvements. As I knew, FPW restricts the amount that individuals can borrow by reference to their credit history, and 6 million VND (~US$353) was the absolute maximum loan amount. So I wondered why borrowers wanting more money didn’t borrow from the bank. After all, it is not uncommon to hear FPW’s borrowers such as Mr. & Mrs. Phung say they expect to make a profit of 2 million VND (~ US$118) per month on a 12-month 3.1 million VND loan.

Now many poor borrowers the world-over can’t borrow from a bank because they have nothing to offer as collateral. But this appears not to be the case in rural Vietnam where most people own their houses and the land on which their houses are built. Which raises another very interesting question: how poor are these borrowers?

I know the answer to the first question is much more complicated than I’ll ever learn but from my few short weeks in Vietnam, here are two pertinent discoveries: many borrowers don’t have title deeds to their properties and some who do aren’t willing to risk losing their homes on a business loan. Being told the latter by Mr. Phung (while Mrs. Phung tended to her granddaughter’s needs) was particularly revealing. Here was a borrower who was willing to borrow money from a loan shark at an <a href=”http://www.mftransparency.org/”>APR</a> of 188% but they wouldn’t mortgage their house to obtain a more favorable interest rate (fortunately for Mrs. Phung, FPW loans carry an APR of only 24%). On the other hand, maybe the Phungs were more clued-in than I give them credit for as I’m sure many small business owners in the US will rue the day they gave their bank a personal guarantee on their small business loans.

I also wonder, in light of the aforementioned discovery, how poor FPW’s borrowers really are. Now I really am tip-toeing into a mindfield. So let me skirt around the edges. <a href=”http://www.cgap.org/p/site/c/aboutus/“>CGAP</a> (the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor), the leading independent resource for objective information, expert opinion, and innovative solutions for microfinance, defines the <a href=”http://econ-www.mit.edu/files/530/”>poor</a> as those living on less than $2 dollar per day per capita. I haven’t yet investigated how this definition takes into consideration real estate ownership. The fact that FPW’s borrowers benefit enormously from such small loans (particularly given the alternatives) is good enough reason to lend to them. But are they really that poor? It is a question that many Kiva Fellows I’ve spoken to ponder. And it is a question I will continue to research and think about.

Postscript: Today, at the opening ceremony for FPW’s fifth branch, the local People’s Committee member welcomed FPW into his district saying, among other things, that he hoped the provision of loans to women in his district would prevent them having to leave their homes to search for work elsewhere. He went on to say that some who did were “stolen into China” – which my interpreter translated to mean sold as wives to Chinese men. Indeed, my translator told me that one of her parents’ neighbors had been sold to China, only to return 10 years after her disappearance. A sobering thought which puts theoretical questions related to “poverty” into perspective.

My mother grew up during WWII. She can make a little go a long way. But she’s no match for the Vietnamese. A couple of nights ago, at my translator’s house, we had chicken.

It is no fun being a chicken. But at least they weren't battery chickens!

Not chicken breasts or chicken thighs but chicken vertebrae. The amount of meat on a chicken’s vertebra is virtually nil. Common sense would accurately lead you to such a conclusion. But the Vietnamese serve up cooked vertebrae and you pop them into your mouth and then suck out all the juices and do your best to find some meat. Not exactly a satisfying meal. Thank goodness for rice. Not that I should complain. My translator and her father are poor people; I used to make in a week what they each make in a year. And yet they have invited me to their home for dinner on a number of occasions. Eating chicken vertebrae, however, beats eating cat – which is what I had for dinner on Sunday evening at a new-found friend’s house.

The cat arrived in the early afternoon. Fortunately not on foot but in a bag carried by one of his friends. I wonder what it had done to deserve such a fate. I spent the next hour or so hearing them chop it up outside. And I spent the next couple of hours not looking forward at all to the moment I’d have to eat it. Fortunately, a shopping trip with the my friend’s wife and her sister took my mind off the evening’s dinner. I bought some silk for the lining of a new suit that I’d ordered from a local tailor a couple of days ago. I wonder what the $100 suit will be like. She bought shoes and a new outfit. But back to the cat. It didn’t taste good. Perhaps it would have tasted better if I had been on the fast road to getting drunk, like the others. How much was psychological as opposed to physiological I can’t say. It reminded me of the time I supped on turtle and piranha in the Amazon rainforest. At least this time, the meal didn’t have me up all night. I’m not looking forward to eating dog. No wonder dogs are all so well behaved in Vietnam; they rarely so much as bark. Snake, porcupine, termites and congealed gelatinous blood don’t appeal either. But generally though, the food here is good.

For me, one of the pleasures of international travel is, generally speaking, eating the local food. I particularly enjoy street food and meals bought from little restaurants frequented by the locals. In that regard, today was a stellar day. I had three tasty meals, all for a total outlay of US$3! In the morning, I had a 2 egg omelette in a French roll from the woman who has a stand outside the MFI’s office ($0.50).

A kindly street vendor who makes my breakfast omelette

Each day she greets me proudly with a new English phrase; today’s was “good morning”. And then for lunch, I had Vietnamese tapas: a small bowl of cuttlefish, a couple of small pork chops, a local variety of roll, some freshly roasted and salted peanuts, rice, a small plate of sliced boiled potatoes with herbs and a larger bowl of boiled greens in their broth (which one pours over the rice). All for $1.60.

My local lunchtime restaurant

And for dinner I had beef pho. I’ll blow the budget later on $1 beers when I meet the only other Westerner in town: an Australian who runs a bamboo company.

I am a little nervous. Not for myself, but on behalf of some of our Kiva clients. The reason? We are heading out to Bac Ninh ( the small town where Kiva’s Vietnamese micro-finance partner has a regional office ) to film some clients. Kivab2b is making a short film about Kiva and the engaging dynamic duo Rachelle ( Canada ) and James ( US ) are here in Vietnam to interview and film a few Kiva clients. They have already criss-crossed the US filming Kiva lenders and now it’s the turn of the borrowers. We have chosen 10 clients who we think will be comfortable being filmed. I am fervently hoping that the cameras, microphones and not least the legal form giving consent ( of which the English version confuses the hell out of me! ) do not prove to be too intimidating.

We arrive in Bac Ninh in relative luxury in a small mini-van we have hired for the occasion. It makes a very nice change from the local buses and hair-raising motorbike taxis I usually take! The mood is a bit like heading to summer camp, as we have myself, Rachelle and James with associated equipment, a translator and a couple of interested head-office MFI staff all coming along for the ride. It’s early as we depart Hanoi ( 6.30am ) and the street markets are at their busiest as vendors sell all manner of fruits, vegetables, breads and meats for the day’s meals – I am sure you can buy virtually anything you desire from a Hanoi street vendor!

We were given strict instructions by Mrs. Lan – the Bac Ninh branch manager – to be there by 8am sharp. I always tell Mrs. Lan that she is the boss and I will do whatever she tells me to, so the early start is to ensure we uphold our part of the deal. Mrs. Lan is impressed to see us already there enjoying a morning cup of Vietnamese tea when she arrives at 7.45am. Introductions over, we depart for our first client, with SEDA’s neighbours curiously observing this motley crew.

The villages around Bac Ninh have not seen many mini-vans and we gingerly progress down tight alleyways and over mud-tracks, Mrs. Lan navigating for the city-slicker driver. We arrive at the home of our first client. She has been expecting us and warmly invites us into her home. I have met most of these clients before and they greet me like an old friend – it’s very heart-warming. Some of them chastise me for not yet providing them with the photos I took of them during my earlier visit – I try to tell them I am waiting until the very end of my stay – and make me promise that I will bring them with me next time. Some of the clients are exactly as they were the first time I met them and have obviously not allowed the fact that they will be filmed intrude on their daily routine. Others however have clearly made a special effort to look a little special for filming and I detect a bit of make-up, some nicer outfits and hair neatly tucked away in elegant buns.

Another notable observation is the stronger presence of the husbands during these filming sessions. SEDA works with the Vietnam Women’s Union and as such well over 90% of their clients are women – as you would expect! Sometimes a client is taking out a loan on behalf of herself and her husband for their joint business but in most instances the wife and husband have separate jobs so as to maximise the family income. Here I must digress slightly to express my admiration for the strength and resilience of Vietnamese women – they really are the back-bone of this country. I am certain that official statistics would show they are key contributors to the nation’s gross domestic product. They do all manner of jobs – I have seen female construction workers, mechanics, garbage collectors – you name it – while also bearing the greater load of the family and household responsibilities. Getting back on track….The husbands are not usually present at the repayment and loan disbursement meetings at which I have previously met the clients, but now that the cameras have arrived they take a more active and visible role, proudly being the man of the house.

James and Rachelle immediately and easily place the clients at ease and scout for a suitable location. These are not closed, controlled film sets – they are people’s homes and businesses – and we are often disturbed by tractors and harvesters passing by, children and neighbours wandering into the midst of filming, ubiquitous mobile phones ringing ( the Vietnamese love to have cutesy pop songs as their mobile phone ring tones) with the call recipient loudly answering and chatting away. Luckily the clients are wearing microphones, which when first shown to them draws the identical response of “I have never worn a microphone before”. Kudos must be given to Mrs. Lan who quick-smart became an expert at discreetly disguising the lapel microphones in the client’s clothing.

If more cameras were available, it would have been fascinating to film “a making of” as word spread and curious neighbours sit, stand and squat at the edges, fascinated by what is occurring. For some, bravery and curiosity combines and they approach the camera lens and peer through it. A special treat awaits me at one of the villages which I have visited many times and has become a bit of a favourite. I always draw a crowd, but it’s the warmth as opposed to the quantity of the people which has left the greater impression. In particular I have been enchanted by these 3 magnificent grandmothers. The first time I saw them there were sitting outside a house that was about 25 metres away and they kept their distance. The next time they were sitting outside the same house but got up and pretended to casually walk by, when in reality they were intently watching what I was doing. This time they had no qualms about coming directly coming over to us and asking what we were doing. “We have seen you here before” they stated and I finally got my longed for interaction. Upon spying my camera, one of them asked me to take a photo and I was extremely pleased to oblige.

But back to the interviews… As previously mentioned I was a little apprehensive as to how comfortable the clients would be, but it turned out to be needless anxiety as many of the clients comfortably and confidently answered the questions. Responses were direct, succinct and matter-of-fact but also peppered with laughter. They were often puzzled at the question “what was their happiest memory?” but all of them were easily able to answer the question “how long do you expect to have to work for”? The answer – “forever”. When asked “How does it make you feel to know that strangers thousands of miles away want to help you and your business” they become a little emotional and thanks and gratitude are demonstrated in their individual ways.

Our client’s businesses and their specific skills continue to fascinate me, be it rice noodle production, silk production right at the source from silkworms, breeding said silkworms, making roof tiles or making specialty cakes. Tremendous pride is evident but never explicitly stated when we compliment them on their output.

When we finished filming after 2 very successful days, I returned to Hanoi feeling yet again privileged and humbled to have had this unique glimpse into our client’s homes, businesses and indeed lives. Memories I will cherish for a lifetime.

To make a loan to a SEDA client similar to the ones we filmed, please click here: http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&partner_id=85&status=fundRaising&sortBy=New+to+Old&_tpg=fb

Posted in KF5 (Kiva Fellows 5th Class), SEDA (Binh Minh), Vietnam Tagged: Xanthi Kouvatas ]]> http://fellowsblog.kiva.org/2008/11/04/ready-for-my-close-up-mr-demille/feed/ 1 Xanthi p1040565 p1040599 p1040551 http://fellowsblog.kiva.org/2008/09/30/honey-im-home-aka-a-typical-kiva-day-in-the-office/ http://fellowsblog.kiva.org/2008/09/30/honey-im-home-aka-a-typical-kiva-day-in-the-office/#comments Tue, 30 Sep 2008 10:29:51 +0000 xanthisodyssey http://kivafellows.wordpress.com/?p=1649 ]]>

I am not a morning person. I know this about myself, but am starkly reminded of this fact when my alarm goes off at 6am. In a zombie trance I get out of bed, put the kettle on and have a shower. I put on the clothes I chose the night before, as I know that at 6am in the morning my brain does not work at its best and there is a high risk I may choose clothes and footwear completely impractical for riding on the back of motorbikes and sitting cross-legged on the floor. Today I head out to Bac Ninh, where SEDA has one of their regional offices and where the actual work of meeting clients, disbursing loans and collecting repayments occurs. All of the Kiva clients are serviced out of Bac Ninh and I travel there twice a week, travelling 2 ½ hours each way on 3 local buses to get there.

Back to my cup of tea. I gulp it down and head to the bus stop down the road to catch my first bus of the day. It’s 6.40am and the routine is to meet Huyen – my university student translator – at Long Bien bus depot at 7am. From there we catch the next bus to Bac Ninh. Long Bien is the largest bus depot in Hanoi and a nightmare to navigate. There is no order to the buses, no signage or timetable to indicate where you can find your particular bus. You basically wait and pray. The one positive is that it’s still early and there are less hawkers about to bother us. The Bac Ninh bus arrives and we get on quickly to ensure we get a seat. Getting a seat on a Vietnamese bus resembles a competitive sport and women get no special treatment. I try and avoid any diplomatic incidents despite what I observe, but once I saw a young man nearly trample a pregnant woman to get to a seat. I could not help myself and stood directly in front of him, loudly announcing that he should be ashamed of himself. Despite the language barrier I think everybody in the bus could understand what I was saying. At the next stop he sheepishly got up and offered the pregnant woman his seat. One thing I do admire however is the fact that older people are treated very respectfully and as soon as they board a bus, somebody will instantly get up and guide them to a seat.

It’s a 1 hour journey to Bac Ninh. Huyen and I usually chat away for the first half an hour, but then after a while we put on our respective MP3 players and listen to music to pass the time. The journey is primarily highway and the scenery would not make it onto a postcard. An hour later we reach Bac Ninh town. We disembark and walk to the bus depot to catch our next bus to Yen Phu, a small town in Bac Ninh province where the SEDA office is based. The Bac Ninh bus depot is one of the few places I get approached by beggars. There is one particular young man – I’d guess early 20s – with a severe limp and facial disfigurement who is there every week. The first time we saw him Huyen told me not to give him money as he would most certainly be hired by somebody to beg and would have to pay his ‘pimp’ the bulk of his takings. This knowledge coupled with telling myself that I am already doing some good by volunteering in Vietnam for 4 months makes me feel more comfortable about ignoring the beggars.

Our last bus arrives and we board for the final 45 minutes journey to Yeh Phu. In contrast this is a stunning journey and I still enjoy looking out over the rice fields and slices of life in the small villages we pass. Then we arrive at Yen Phu. It’s 9.30am and it feels like we have done a full day’s work already, but we have just begun.

On the Way to Yen Phu

On The Way to Yen Phu

We are warmly welcomed by the SEDA credit officers. Then onto the back of a motorbike and off we go to visit clients. The credit officers have 3 days of client interaction – Tuesday through to Thursday. In the morning they have their weekly repayment collection meetings and in the afternoon they disburse new loans. On Monday and Friday they are in the office catching up on paperwork. I enjoy the motorbike rides out to visit clients. The preparation beforehand is hilarious. I basically lather my face, arms and neck in sun-cream, put on sunglasses and sometimes a hat. And that’s it. The locals however have a much more fastidious routine. They wear long shirts, gloves, hats and face masks to ensure that no skin whatsoever is exposed to the sun and that they stay white. It makes me laughingly think of the women back home who pay a lot of money for regular fake sun-tans.

All Covered Up and Ready to Go

We drive through all manner of surrounds – narrow village laneways, along canals, pass cemeteries, through rice fields- arriving at the location for our first collection meeting. The meetings are usually held in a central location such as a school, pagoda or a home and we will meet with 4-5 groups at once. I always get a little nervous at schools as invariably one of the students sees me and then bedlam ensues. They leave their classrooms and jump and dance around singing “hello, hello, hello”. After a few minutes a teacher will appear and yell or dramatically bang a drum and they scurry back to class. Occasionally some persistent little rascals will remain throughout the meetings, intriguingly observing us. 

On the Way to Clients

On the Way to Clients

Hello, Hello, Hello

The credit officer meets with each group leader one by one and collects the weekly repayments. I then enquire if I can ask them a few questions. It never ceases to amaze me how open the clients are with a complete stranger and they patiently answer my questions about their family finances, families and hopes for the future. Interview over, I ask if I may take a photo. This usually draws a response of nervous laughter and protestations that they are not suitably dressed for a photo. The credit officers interject telling them that’s nonsense and that they look fine, so they acquiesce whilst patting down their hair or straightening a shirt – the response to having a photo taken really is universal! One time while I was taking photos of clients, one of them was taking a photo of me with their phone – the shoe very firmly on the other foot!

The meeting is repeated 3 times at separate locations and we usually meet with 10 -15 groups per session. Lunchtime. The Vietnamese take their lunchbreaks very seriously. Usually we drive back to the office and will have lunch at one of the food stalls in Yen Phu. Occasionally we are too far from the office and may have lunch at a client’s home. I am always humbled by our client’s hospitality when we visit their homes. They are always delighted to see me and dust off their best chair for me to sit down on. Cups of tea will be thrust into my hand and instantly refilled the moment they are empty. It’s an honour when we eat with them but I also feel a little guilty that we are taking food from their families’ mouths. I quash the strong desire to ask the credit officers to give them some money for the meal as I know that would be incredibly insulting. Thankfully for my western conscience we don’t have meals with clients very often.

After lunch we have disbursement meetings where new loans are distributed. These are large meetings as every member of the group must attend, so 20 – 30 women may be in attendance. These meetings are held in a public area as a home could not comfortably contain this many people. The credit officers commence by talking about loan discipline, the importance of meeting their repayment obligations and also of making savings. Typically a SEDA client will also have a savings account where they will contribute 5,000 Vietnamese Dong ( $US 0.30 ) a week in savings. That does not seem like a lot – and it isn’t – but instilling a behaviour of savings is important and even a small amount will ultimately pay dividends. Once the ‘pep talk’ is over, the groups approach one by one and each member of the group needs to sign a basic contract acknowledging that they have received the funds and will repay accordingly. It’s very businesslike and the women usually count their loans to ensure they have received all their funds. One woman once made me laugh as she did not like the fact that some of her notes were old, so she emphatically asked the credit officer for newer notes! 

A Loan Disbursement Meeting at a More Subdued Moment

Making it All Official

About 2 – 3 disbursement meetings are held in an afternoon and then it’s back to the office. It’s typically 4 – 4.30pm and Huyen and I bid the Yen Phu team good-bye. We trudge back to the bus stop, fervently praying that we don’t have to wait too long for the bus. The longest we have had to wait is 50 minutes! There is absolutely nothing at the Yen Phu bus station so that was 50 of the longest minutes of my life. Eventually the bus arrives and we commence our 3 return bus journeys. The music I choose on the way back to Hanoi tends to be mellow as I am often reflecting on the clients I have met and the sneak peek I have had into their lives. I am always in admiration of the resilience, hospitality and sheer hard work demonstrated by the Kiva clients – there is no ‘woe is me’ self pitying attitude.

Eventually, mercifully, I turn the key and enter my apartment. In reality it’s modest but in contrast to where I have been today it’s palatial. It’s already dark and usually between 7 and 7.30pm. I immediately head to my shower as I am always sweaty and grimy. I cook a modest meal and usually treat myself to ice-cream. Exhausted it’s early to bed, but satisfied that in a small way I am doing my bit to help.

This is what I do two days a week. They are long, hot and tiring days, but they are also my favourite days of the week. 

Posted in KF5 (Kiva Fellows 5th Class), SEDA (Binh Minh), Vietnam Tagged: Kiva, microfinance, Vietnam, Xanthi Kouvatas ]]> http://fellowsblog.kiva.org/2008/09/30/honey-im-home-aka-a-typical-kiva-day-in-the-office/feed/ 4 Xanthi 0611 p10306531 0392 0401 0482 0172 p10301372 p10303902 http://fellowsblog.kiva.org/2008/09/18/my-first-blog/ http://fellowsblog.kiva.org/2008/09/18/my-first-blog/#comments Thu, 18 Sep 2008 22:45:50 +0000 jamesm1969 http://kivafellows.wordpress.com/?p=1515 ]]>

For someone who is non-technical, blogging is a whole new adventure. So I’ll keep this short just to see if I can post this blog. Ciao.

In Hanoi the tourist stalls in the old quarter are crammed with all manner of trinkets for tourists to buy. T-shirts are of course popular and there are many that contain that ubiquitous saying ‘same same but different’. Usually I ignore the persistent hawkers ( while fighting back the urge to proudly declare that I am more than a mere tourist ) but events over the past couple of weeks have made me actually stop and think a little more about ‘same same but different’.

I am first generation Australian of Greek heritage. I grew up very much in a Mediterranean household, where family and food is at the core of life. I vividly remember the sense of bewilderment I felt when I went to barbecue of a friend and was told to bring my own meat and drinks. What ? An invitation like that would cause confusion amongst my family, as for Greeks a hosts’ table is laden with food and people fight for the “honour” of paying a bill after a night out.   

Although you would not think it, the Vietnamese share quite a few similarities to their Mediterranean “cousins”, as family and food are also at the core of Vietnamese life. For the Vietnamese I would add a third pillar – business and the obtaining of money. This is decidedly lower down the list for Mediterraneans with their “live for today and tomorrow will take care of itself” attitude, although I imagine that if you live in a country where significant poverty is not an issue, you would have a more carefree attitude to money.

Another similarity is how loud the Vietnamese talk! I have a voice that is loud and rises further and quickens in direct proportion to my passion. My Mediterranean friends and I can all talk at the same time and what to others may appear as talking over the top of each other, to us is normal. You don’t stay quiet in a Mediterranean environment – you have your say and you do it emphatically. I sometimes struggle with this in the Australian business culture, but in Vietnam it’s not a problem. I often sit in on meetings where 3 conversations are happening at the same time and the voices get increasingly louder as a point is debated. Sometimes it sounds like they are angry with each other, but they are not – it’s just the very direct conversation style. If a phone rings while sitting in a bus, the phone call recipient will answer and their conversation will boom throughout the bus. This initially surprised me as I expected a more restrained conversational style, but my Mediterranean background helped me adapt very quickly.  

I love being Australian. I think that if you grow up in Australia you have truly won life’s lottery, as you do for the most part grow up in a land of tolerance, opportunity and fairness, not to mention outstanding climate and physical beauty. One of things I treasure most is Australia’s multi-cultural background. I love the fact that when you travel you always feel that things are a little bit familiar because you might have seen or tasted something similar as a result of the Italian, Chinese, Portugese, Vietnamese, Sudanese, Lebanese or South African family that lives down the road. Of course Australia is not perfect, but overwhelmingly you have fewer things to complain about as an Australian than you would as a Vietnamese or any of the other countries that Kiva is active in. For me however there is a ‘but’ and the ‘but’ comes in the form of Australia’s isolation. I have often thought that if we could take Australia and just move it further up, then it truly would be perfect. I know many of my countrymen revel in Australia’s relative isolation and would be horrified by this thought, but not me. I wish we were closer to the action. That we weren’t so comfortably complacent. And most of all I wish that Europe wasn’t a whole day away. But I guess you can’t have everything. And after extensive travel and if you consider that the Unites States has had 8 years of Bush and his cronies in charge, there still is no other place I would rather call home.     

One of the things I am enjoying however about my Kiva Fellowship is feeling like I am a global citizen. An Australian living in Hanoi, working for an American group with an Asian micro-finance organisation. I love hearing the multitude of backgrounds, perspectives and accents. Last week I attended a micro-finance forum at which over 500 delegates from all around the world were present.  I had dinner with Cambodians and Dutch, swapped ideas with a woman from Papua New Guinea and had a lively discussion with someone from Bangladesh.

The more you travel and live abroad, the more you realise that although cultures are different and should be celebrated as such, there are also lots of areas where we are the same. That to me is wonderfully reassuring. Maybe I will get myself one of those t-shirts after all.