A Day in the Life of ... A Loan Officer from Ecuador

Laura Sarango is a loan officer at fundación FACES, lendwithcare.org's partner microfinance institution in Ecuador. She has very kindly taken time out of her busy schedule to describe an average day in her office.

Laura (in the purple t-shirt) with her colleague, Fernando, and loan officers from the Malcatos office
© CARE

"My name is Laura and my official role within FACES is to provide financial and health education to all of FACES’ customers. I am also in charge of collecting the customer profiles that we send to lendwithcare to be uploaded to their website. When I start my work day the first thing I do is review all the activities that I have planned for the day and write them down in my notebook. I then usually log-on to my computer to check my emails and then log-in to the lendwithcare system so I can check the status of the loans we have on the site as well upload any outstanding stories.

When I have a training workshop with a group of micro-entrepreneurs scheduled I review all the teaching materials that I need to bring to the workshop, I gather the handouts, flipcharts, school supplies and anything else I need and put them all in my bag and then leave the office. If the workshop is near the city then it does not take me long to get there but sometimes these workshops are very far (3, 5 and 7 hours away) and in these instances I have to make sure I have all the materials prepared for the workshop the day before.

When I get to the place where we will hold the workshop, I unload all my stuff and then I start the workshop, inviting attendees to actively participate in the two-hour workshop.  The workshop involves a number of activities that are designed to make the workshop interactive, motivational and thought-provoking. At the end of the workshop there are always a lot of participants who want to know more about the microfinance services FACES provides so I always leave time to talk to them and answer their questions as well as give them some material to read. There are two types of groups we currently hold workshops for: heterogeneous groups of micro-entrepreneurs and heterogeneous groups of people with physical disabilities.

I am usually back in the office in the afternoon and I will check whether my fellow loan officers have forwarded the profiles of the entrepreneurs we have selected for lendwithcare.

When I do not have a workshop planned, I spend much of the workday collecting and uploading profiles to lendwithcare since we have seven offices throughout the southern region of Ecuador and they send us a lot of profiles to be uploaded. I also write reports on workshops we have already held and plan for upcoming ones as well as develop materials to send to potential customers.

On other occasions I travel to the offices of all our agencies to feedback on the process of collecting their clients’ profiles and, together with my colleague Fernando and loan officers from each agency, monitor the progress of existing lendwithcare customers.

That's my job with FACES."

                                                                             - LAURA SARANGO Q

Compiled by Laura Sarango, FACES Loan Officer & Nancy Thomas, Lendwithcare.org Executive

If you have any questions you would like put to our partners overseas for this blog series please email info@lendwithcare.org with the subject title 'A day in the life of blog'.

Ecuador: Microfinance and Women Entrepreneurs

‘No tengo con quien dejar los niños’

Mariana Robalino, an entrepreneur from Ecuador
© CARE

Looking through the types of business supported by lendwithcare in Ecuador, it is notable that many women manage shops, raise poultry or provide sewing or tailoring services – typically, activities that are undertaken from home. When during a recent visit to South America I asked women entrepreneurs why they favoured such enterprises, invariably the response was ‘No tengo con quien dejar los niños’ or ‘I have to look after the children’. Working from home enables women to earn an income while looking after young children – they can close the business while they drop off and pick up their children from school or attend to other urgent tasks such as taking an ill child to the doctor.

The experience of Carmen Castillo, who in May 2012 received a loan to buy another computer for her Internet café, is typical. Doña Carmen used to work as a radio controller for a taxi firm but found it difficult to combine work with looking after her three young children. She decided therefore to start her own business. She converted the ground floor of her home into an Internet shop while continuing to live on the first floor. Carmen opens the shop at around 10 am each day after making breakfast and taking her children to school. She then attends to customers throughout the day, closing briefly when she has to pick the children up from school. When her partner returns from work she switches to other tasks such as cooking, cleaning and making sure her children do their homework while he continues to look after the shop until it closes at 10 pm. 



Carmen Castillo © CARE



Women who have businesses that require them to work outside the home, for example managing a stall in the public market, rely on other family members, particularly grandmothers, to look after their children. Lendwithcare’s microfinance partner, Fundacion de Apoyo Comunitario y Social del Ecuador, estimates that in approximately one-third of families the father is absent. However, even in the remaining two-thirds of households looking after children is still considered primarily a ‘mother’s responsibility’ - although among younger parents in particular such attitudes are changing. I asked some of the many women who sell fresh fruit and vegetables in the markets how they used loans. Primarily, loans enable them to pay wholesale suppliers in cash, rather than taking items on credit. This is important because not only do they receive a discount, but they can also select the freshest and best quality produce available. The valued outcome is that they are able to sell their stock quicker, close the stall and return home early to care for the their children.

Undoubtedly, the types of business activities that women prefer to undertake or the time they spend outside the home is influenced by their ability to depend upon other family members to assist with child care, as well as the accessibility and cost of childcare facilities. Unfortunately children’s nurseries tend to be either heavily oversubscribed or too expensive for lower income families, while outside the larger towns and cities childcare facilities are simply non-existent. Creating more affordable places at nurseries would make women’s lives easier and it might also impact upon the range of business activities that they consider undertaking. In fact, in some respects the challenges facing women in Ecuador are not too dissimilar to those faced by women in industrialised countries such as the United Kingdom.

By Dr Ajaz Khan, lendwithcare.org Microfinance Advisor

Loans can be given as a gift voucher to a friend or family member, who can choose which entrepreneur they would like to support. The entrepreneur uses the loan to help grow their business, and later pays the lender back. The lender can either withdraw the money and keep it, or lend the same money to another entrepreneur.

Gift vouchers range from £15 and are available in various designs, which can be sent via email, downloaded and/or printed. They are available at www.lendwithcare.org/gift_vouchers.

Has the debate on microfinance made us forget about the poor?

Lendwithcare on location in Ecuador


Ines © CARE



The microfinance community can be a confusing and contradictory place. Ever growing and buzzing, it is a community built upon grand ‘for’ and ‘against’ statements, a place that is bursting at the seams with facts and figures and a place, let’s face it, that leaves even the most persistent of ‘truth-seekers’ feeling dizzied and exhausted. Which is why my recent trip to Ecuador provided a much welcomed break and refocussed my attentions on what, or more accurately whom, this is all about: the working poor.

The first microentrepreneur I met in Ecuador, Ines Bacilia Jara Maza, hit home the reality of the work we at lendwithcare are doing in microfinance with a big thud (quite literally a thud since I managed very ungracefully to slip and fall when looking around her farm – in my defence they had just experienced a particularly heavy rainy season!). An independent woman, working and running her own agricultural business while raising seven children, including two with disabilities, Ines epitomised the determined and capable working poor person that Muhammad Yunus has spent the last 30 plus years describing to the world. Ines was using the 3,000 USD recently lent to her by the microfinance organisation Fundacion de Apoyo Comunitario y Social del Ecuador (FACES), her fourth loan, to buy vegetable seeds, to purchase pesticides and fertliser and to cover the cost of transporting her produce to the local market. Small loans enabled Ines to buy these essential items with cash instead of on credit, which is often cheaper, and provided her with a financial stability that is hard to come by in a season-dependent industry like farming. Ines was now able to employ a couple of helpers during particularly busy periods as well as start saving some income for her business’s and family’s future. 

Carmen © CARE

Similarly, Carmen Beatriz Guambaria, a 49-year-old market vendor described how she works seven days a week from 6am to 5pm to support her family. Her husband, struggling with an alcohol problem, was no longer in work and the financial reponsibility of their four dependents (two of their own children and two of Carmen’s nieces) lay squarely on Carmen’s shoulders. What struck me about Carmen was the way in which she described her circumstances. Without even the slightest hint of self-pity Carmen instead described with pride and honour how she had set up her business in the market (after selling things on the streets turned out to be an inadequate income-generating activity), how it had expanded and grown over the last few years and rather boastfully, how she was the hardest working woman in the market.

Both Ines and Carmen, only two of the inspirational microentrepreneurs I met while in Ecuador, were able to send all of the children in their care to school (something that is often subject to a fee and impossible when you need hands to help out at home/at work). They were financially independent and they were making concrete business and personal plans for the future. These were not women forced to live by the day-by-day survival method that can be so obstructive to escaping poverty, but women living their lives one step ahead of poverty. Of course it is very difficult (and in fact unnecessary) to say it was solely access to credit that was enabling this transition from within poverty to outside it, but it was certainly clear that the credit FACES made available to these microentrepreneurs was a contributing factor to this transition. In fact every single entrepreneur I met said that without credit it would not be possible to run their businesses and as I heard over and over again, particularly from the female entreprenuers I met, without their businesses they would have nothing.    

We must not forget that the story of microcredit also involves the organisations and individuals that provide the credit. I have already described in a previous blog the processes by which lendwithcare chooses the ‘right’ microfinance organisation to partner with but, similarly to the individual stories of the microentrepreneurs, what is often forgotten when talking about microfinance (and specifically microcredit) are the individual loan officers.

Nancy with Leonor, a FACES entrepreneur © CARE

On my first day of entreprenuer visits I was introduced to Flor, head of the FACES branch in Malacatos, a small town 40 minutes drive south of the city of Loja. As if straight out of Muhammad Yunus’ Banker to the Poor book, Flor seemed to embody the committed, totally immersed, loan officer Yunus describes as essential to the success of microfinance organisations in vulnerable communities. She could reel off incredible details about her clients and their families (bearing in mind this office alone served hundreds of clients) and she was greeted with smiles and embraces at every home/place of work we visited. I was also glad to be received rather suspiciously by Doris, the branch manager of FACES in north Loja, who was worried that a group of strangers turning up at her clients’ workplaces, asking questions about their lives and businesses would unsettle them and make them nervous. These loan officers seemed to clearly have their clients interests at heart and the relationship between the entrepreneur and loan officer (one I observed closely) reflected this.

While in Ecuador I was reminded that working in microfinance is not about finding a single solution to world poverty but instead recognising that in some places and for some people, microfinance is working. Within the complex and confusing debate on the merits of microfinance (a debate, I agree we should constantly be having) we should not forget that there are good institutions - ones that have a strong social mission and are not driven primarily by making profits that are working with vulnerable individuals in communities around the world and having a positive impact on their lives.

 
By Nancy Thomas, assistant at lendwithcare.org

Finding the 'right' microfinance partner

Lendwithcare on location in Ecuador

Entrepreneur: Leonor Zhingre

© CARE

When describing to a friend recently how lendwithcare works she responded ‘so it’s a bit like an online dating website for charities?’ A comparison that I instantly felt like rejecting yet one which made me think: As life in developed countries becomes more and more digitalised, whether it be how we find love, complete daily chores like food shopping, or indeed how we give to charity, are face-to-face interactions becoming a waste of time?

After all, according to the Office for National Statistics, 12% of people in the UK now prefer to do their shopping online, with this number due to grow ‘significantly’ by 2016[1] and in early 2011 the British online dating community was pegged at 8.6 million strong[2]. And indeed this preference for ‘doing things’ online has been popular with supporters of lendwithcare. Through the lendwithcare website, lenders are not only able to see pictures, read stories and receive updates about their chosen recipients but they also become a part, if they so wish, of a lendwithcare online community in which they can share stories, motivations and experiences. As one lendwithcare lender put it “The beauty of this scheme is that if you set some money aside once, as it is repaid it can keep being re-loaned, therefore helping more people. I also love the idea of seeing real people in real places and know that I am helping them in some way.”

However, on a recent due-diligence trip to Ecuador I was starkly reminded not only of the importance but necessity of the face-to-face encounter.

Myself and Ajaz, lendwithcare’s Microfinance Advisor, arrived in Ecuador’s high capital, Quito, on the 14^th of February with one mission in mind: finding the best, and significantly the first, Latin American microfinance partner for lendwithcare. The process for finding the ‘right’ partner starts months before the trip and involves weeks of web-based research, as well as lengthy electronic correspondence between lendwithcare and country offices (in this case CARE Ecuador), lendwithcare and potential microfinance partners and lendwithcare and its UK-based partners. Correspondence that outlines criteria, seeks to review and discuss financial information and makes clear the objectives and goals of all parties involved. All so far comfortably devoid of any significant face-to-face time.       



Entrepreneur: Ines

© CARE



However, as we left the digi-world of the office behind and headed to Ecuador, slightly jet-lagged and constantly out of breath (Quito’s impressive altitude of 2,800 metres makes simple hill walking something of marathon proportions), the face-to-face became paramount in any, and all, decisions. By the end of day three in Ecuador we had met our partners in the country office, met three potential microfinance partners in Quito and the surrounding northern province of Imbabura and visited and spoken to a handful of microentrepreneurs - and we suddenly realised that the partner that seemed ideal on computer, in the world wide web, and through electronic mail (and I must add a very good and reputable financial institution) was not the ‘right’ one for us. How could our digi-senses have got it wrong? How? Because sometimes so much more can be gauged and understood when human beings come face-to-face, rather than screen-to-screen. And because in most relationships, at some point, some human contact is vital. After all, it is still a human being from the online supermarket who delivers your food and a real-life date that determines whether the person you found online is ‘right’ or not.



After an internal re-evaluation aided by discussions with our partners from the CARE Ecuador office and some vital financial information provided by Red Financiera Rural, a national microfinance coordinating body in Ecuador, Ajaz and I decided to trust our face-to-face conclusions and travel down to the south of Ecuador to meet Fundación FACES, a microfinance organisation who, again digitally, seemed perfect for lendwithcare.

We spent a busy few days with FACES’ staff and entrepreneurs, gauging in a way that is really only possible face-to-face, each other’s motivations, goals and expectations. To our delight we quickly realised that FACES, a non-profit non-governmental organisation (and not just a financial intermediary) believed strongly in the provision of microcredit as a way to facilitate social development and took seriously their commitment to improving the lives of marginalised and/or vulnerable social and economic groups. Importantly, the few days we spent with FACES gave us the opportunity to observe the relationship between FACES staff and their clients (lendwithcare’s potential entrepreneurs). We could observe how FACES’ loan officers were received by the clients, how they talked to one another, facial expression, touch … all things that we use daily to inform us about a person’s character. This time, it seemed like we had found the ‘right’ partner, confirmed by our face-to-face time with the FACES team.



FACES Staff

© CARE



The first Ecuadorian entrepreneurs have now been uploaded to the lendwithcare website, bringing lenders in the UK and FACES’ clients screen to screen for the first time – a digi-relationship that is enjoyed immensely by both parties since it connects, directly, the lender and the recipient. A digi-relationship that, as this trip reminded me, must start with the crucial face-to-face encounter. 



Entreprenuer: Marina Zavala

© CARE



By Nancy Thomas, assistant at lendwithcare.org

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[1] http://gulfnews.com/business/retail/uk-retailers-losing-customers-to-online-shops-1.987113

[2] http://www.city-connect.org/dating-statistics-in-the-uk/