Showing posts with label SEEDFINANCE. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SEEDFINANCE. Show all posts

Philippines Diary - Update from the field by Tracey Horner

04:18 – by 0
Update from a field visit in the Philippines by Tracey Horner, received on Tues. 14thJan., 14:04 London time.

"I finally arrived in Manila over 24 hours after I left my house. The Manila traffic is truly appalling during rush hour, which seems to last for much of the day. It reminded me of the fab BBC Programme "Toughest place to be a...", which featured in one episode a bus driver from London living in Manila and taking over the job of a 'Jeepney' driver for a week.  Funnily enough, the security briefing I received from the CARE office said that staff are not allowed to travel in Jeepney's due to safety concerns!  I ended up commuting back to the office in what Filipinos call 'tricycles', which are like a motor bike with a side car.  These are the same vehicles that Lendwithcare is helping to fund, with loans to some drivers who want to convert their 'tricycles' to less polluting LPG gas.  More details to follow next week when I meet with the company 'Clean Engines' to discuss further funding."

Tweet from Tracey on the day she arrived:
"This morning, I met with the CARE Philippines office to hear about how they are helping people who were affected by Typhoon Haiyan (locally known as Yolanda).  We discussed the challenges in scaling up an operation to cope with such a devastating natural disaster. [All updates from CARE's work, including in the Philippines can be read here.] It has been an interesting discussion, it is very easy to imagine how money is needed to buy and distribute food and shelter. But there is so much more involved to ensure NGO's like CARE respond to large disasters responsibly and provide accountability to all donors. The CARE Philippines office had to be scaled up from one person to 16 in a matter of weeks. Luckily CARE has very experienced senior staff who can be deployed in such circumstances and are managing the operation. CARE Philippines has worked with a local partner, Accord, for a long time and it is through this partnership and some new partnerships with some of the microfinance co-operatives Lendwithcare works through that CARE is responding to the disaster.  I will see more on-the-ground activity when I visit the Islands on Thursday, but I am told that CARE has been and is currently distributing food, providing shelter and discussing how people's livelihoods can be re-built.

As I am typing this diary entry, the BBC world weather forecast is showing extensive flooding in the areas I will be visiting.  I hope I am still going to be able to get around and gather the information that I know our Lendwithcare lenders are asking for about the entrepreneurs they have been supporting.

In preparation for my trip I have been reading the diaryof CARE aid worker, Sandra Bulling, who was one of the first to visit Tacloban, the worst affected city after typhoon Haiyan. I wonder with trepidation what I will see when I reach Tacloban approximately nine weeks after Sandra's visit."

Latest updates:

Tracey is experiencing a bad sea condition in the Philippines, which is preventing her from reaching the worst affected area of Tacloban. A true experience of how Filipinos are at the mercy of weather every day.

Day 2 – Safely arrived in the Philippines

14:15 – by 0
Day Two
Head of Lendwithcare, Tracey Horner, safely arrived in Manila this morning where she will stay for a couple of days and meet with CARE Philippines staff to discuss a rehabilitation plan for the people who lost their livelihoods when Typhoon Haiyan hit on November 8th last year. One of the main questions to be addressed is how Lendwithcare, a peer-to-peer lending platform operating in devastated areas, can contribute to these rebuilding efforts.

Tomorrow, Tracey will also meet with Lendwithcare's local partner, SEEDFINANCE, the Filipino microfinance organisation that Lendwithcare has been working with to provide small loans to entrepreneurs living in the Philippines for the past to years. SEEDFINANCE will provide Tracey with an update on the 38 Lendwithcare entrepreneurs that have been adversely affected by the typhoon. As shown on the homemade map below, Tracey will travel to visit those affected in Tacloban, Ormoc, Omaganhan and Cebu, to assess what can be done to help support restoration and to hear their stories.




In the past, Lendwithcare has helped many small businesses in now-devastated areas such as the islands of Cebu or Leyte. Analiza Cangmaong is one of them; she was a greengrocer selling bananas and sweet potatoes on a market in Tuburan, Cebu, but she was making a lot of losses because her stock would rot before she could sell it. After a series of short-term loans she managed to diversify her stock and start selling dried fish and to put an end to any more waste. “Fish is more profitable. It never goes off before sale. There is no waste. […]The loans have improved our family’s life. I have been able to send my daughter to college, which I could not do before. […] Now we have been able to buy a motorcycle, which is helpful for our business, and we have bought appliances for the house. We have music now. Also our family eat better food at home”, she says.




Access to microfinance, such as small loans, has the potential to significantly improve the living standards of low income families living in poverty, and could be an important tool in the rebuilding efforts after a natural disaster; a possibility that Tracey is currently exploring in the Philippines.

Follow Tracey as she travels to meet Lendwithcare entrepreneurs on our Twitter and Facebook feeds and by following this blog.

Lendwithcare.org supports important green initiative in the Philippines!

05:36 – by 0

We have added our first sustainable social enterprise loan to the lendwithcare.org website to help tricycle taxi drives to acquire cleaner engines for their tricycles.  We are supporting an initiative launched by our partner in the Philippines, SEEDFINANCE and a local company called “Clean Engines Incorporated” (CEI) to help reduce air pollution in Metropolitan Manila.  This initiative aims to encourage local tricycle taxi drivers to switch over from two-stroke petrol and diesel powered engines (highly pollutant) to environmentally-friendly liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) engines.


In the Philippines 84% of the country’s population depends on tricycles (similar to rickshaws) for transport. At present, 70% of these tricycles have polluting two-stroke engines. This has a devastating impact on the environment as well as on the health of urban residents.

The local council of Mandaluyong City in Manila has  recently enacted legislation requiring all tricycles to switch over to cleaner liquefied petroleum gas (LPG),  which is undoubtedly beneficial in the long-term, but in the short-term is expensive  (sometimes unaffordable) for tricycle taxi drivers.
This is where lendwithcare and you specifically come in! We are going to help to make this happen.   For the first time, our microfinance partner (and not an individual entrepreneur) is requesting a large loan of $25,000 US Dlls to provide smaller loans of $500 to 50 motorized tricycle taxi so that they can pay for their vehicles to be switched over to LPG without crippling their livelihoods.
The loans are to be provided through a local financial co-operative called “The Rizal Technological University Employees Multi-Purpose Cooperative” (RTU-KMPC). The loans will be repaid over 18 months.  The RTU-KMPC will require tricycle drivers to become members before providing them with a loan to purchase the LPG toolkit that enables the change. Once the kit is installed, air pollution is significantly reduced but also tricycle drivers spend less money on fuel. As members they will also be entitled to access other financial and non-financial services of the co-operative and also share in its profits.
 
The various parties involved, SEEDFINANCE, CEI and the RTU-KMPC are liaising with the Mandaluyong City local government not only to stress the environmental and fuel efficiency aspects of the switch from diesel to LPG, but also to assist local tricycle drivers to pay for the change. CEI will provide training to LPG toolkit users, provide warranties and establish several maintenance shops throughout the city. The aim is to eventually extend the project and provide loans to more tricycle drivers and make Mandaluyong City a cleaner, less polluted and more pleasant place to live and work, and hopefully a role model to other areas in Manila and other cities in the Philippines.
To read more about this fantastic initiative and to support tricycle taxi drivers click here  

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