Video updates from Togo part three: “A small loan is like oil in an engine; it allows people to move forward"

Finally, part three of Tracey's video updates from her April 2013 trip to Togo is here! Here are also parts one and two for some context.

To round off my blog/video updates from Togo, I wanted to share with you some lasting impressions from the trip.

The passion and commitment of the WAGES staff

Many of the office staff began their careers as Loan Officers, including the General Manager, Ramanou Nassirou who, when talking about the entrepreneurs said “most of them know how to run their business, we just provide them with a small loan to get them started - a small and affordable loan is like oil in a car engine; it allows people to move forward". 

I have already written about how WAGES supported clients who lost everything in the massive fireswhich swept through the great markets of Lomé and Kara last year and this demonstrates further the commitment that WAGES have to improving the lives of their clients. 

The importance of a good loan officer

 A good loan officer will take time out of their incredibly busy work schedules to support entrepreneurs beyond simply disbursing loans and collecting repayments. This makes a huge impact on the lives and successes of the people they serve and their businesses  and I saw it time and time again with the WAGES' staff.

Yaya’s story: Yaya was one of the very first entrepreneurs to receive funding from Lendwithcare back in 2010.  Yaya told me there has been a big difference between before the loans and now.  He is able to send his children to school, they eat three meals a day and his business has ensured the health of his family. Recently one of his children was sick but he was able to afford to pay the hospital fees – something he’s sure he wouldn’t have been able to do before.

What access to finance really means

Access to financial services such as loans and savings accounts are absolutely vital to people who would otherwise never be able to move their business beyond the most basic hand to mouth existence. 

Assiahame’s story: I met Assiahame at her small hairdressing salon in a side street of Atakpamé.  She told me that her salon alone didn’t have enough regular customers, so her loan enabled her to diversify into selling jewellery, bags as well as hair pieces. Before finding out about WAGES she had previously used a money-lender who charged her 50% interest on her loan and used to hassle her for the repayments.

And that like any small business, there are many challenges and although access to credit helps lessen the burden, it is not always enough ...

The need to diversify when things get tough

William’s story: I had met William a year ago and was struck by how important he is to his village, near the town of Atakpamé.  Not only is William a fisherman employing twelve people in the village, he is also the local Pastor.  This year when I met William he was starting to diversify his income sources as it is becoming harder and harder to make a living from fishing.  He told me that fishing was only good for three months of the year and it was becoming increasingly difficult to make that income last.  As is typical of men like William, rather than just accepting the situation he was thinking of other ways in which he could earn a living.  He had just started a very small business, selling musical instruments and has now taken a loan so he can grow this business.

I hope you have enjoyed this small window into the lives of some of the entrepreneurs featured on lendwithcare.org.  I really enjoyed meeting them and hearing their stories.

Finally, I would like to thank everyone who made my time in Togo so enjoyable and rewarding, especially Felix Kilinglo and the Loan Officers from the Atakpamé branch; Forgive, Lolonyo, Sylvain, Success, Dodji, Emmanuel and Esso and Mensah Dakevi, the WAGES lendwithcare officer and Sambieni Yarikoi who accompanied me for all my time in Togo and were the perfect example of the warmth and hospitality of Togolese people.

Tracey Horner, Head of Lendwithcare

  

Lendwithcare in the Philippines | Stories from survivors of Typhoon Haiyan

Tracey Horner, Head of Lendwithcare, has spent the last 14 days visiting lendwithcare entrepreneurs in typhoon-affected areas of the Philippines. Below she retells the stories of just some of the entrepreneurs she met ...

Lendwithcare entrepreneur, Anecito Rivera, before Typhoon Haiyan

Two days ago I met a widow called Generosa Pantuan who has six boys aged between sixteen and thirty three, she also has five grandchildren.  Her business is selling ready to wear clothes. Her house was destroyed by the typhoon.  Her son reconstructed the shelter above her business with tin sheeting donated by an NGO, however it is was not enough to repair the house as well.  The typhoon destroyed all her stock of clothes, luckily she has been able to buy new stock on a sale or return basis.  The savings she had built up with FCCT helped her a little.

Generosa lives with one of her sons and his wife who fish and then cook and sell the fish. The fish she was cooking when we arrived is called Kitong and is one of the tastiest fish I have ever eaten. She insisted on giving me some, I pointed out that she needed it more than me but she was insistent and it would have offended her to refuse – we had the fish at dinner that night and it was delicious – this really sums up the Filipino spirit. The family fishing boat was partially destroyed by falling debris during the typhoon, they have mended part if it but don’t have the money to repair it properly, making fishing too dangerous in the boat right now.

Generosa at work before Typhoon Haiyan

Since the family house was destroyed they have converted a pig pen into a temporary shelter. I saw that there were many holes in the roof that had been patched with bits of plastic sheeting. They hope and wait for more relief.  Proper shelter is their biggest problem. They hear a rumour that they might get some galvanised iron sheeting but haven’t heard anything yet and are waiting patiently.  They did get some rice, sardines and noodles as relief supplies in the early days.

Next I met Anecito Rivera, he has four children, all boys aged between 11 – 17.  They all live here in one room house.  Anecito can only afford to send one child to school.  Although there is a government school with free tuition, you have to pay for books and uniforms and other extras which makes it unaffordable for lots of poor families.

Anecito is a fruit and vegetable vendor. He used to buy and sell in the local market but his entire stock was lost during the typhoon and he can’t afford to buy more.  Right now he is reliant on the income his wife brings in from her job at a drug store.

I had been asking everyone I met “tell me how Yolanda has affected you” and Anecito simply replied “Yolanda had a big impact on me – so badly affected I can’t explain.”  He has a small plot of land by his house where he plants crops and he had a mango tree which was bearing fruit. He told me that when he saw his mango tree was ruined by Yolanda he cried.

He has recently re-planted some crops of banana, sweet potato, and papaya. He hopes to harvest and sell these at the local market in the future.  The banana crops will take one and a half years to fruit but the others can be harvested in four months.

When I asked him how he felt about the future he said that he never loses hope and has optimism that he will be able to revive his businesses.  He will take out one of FCCT’s restoration loans soon to revitalise his business and do some repairs to his house.  Like the others he received some food aid and he also received some tarpaulin like material. 

For more updates from the Philippines stay tuned to the lendwithcare blog and our Facebook and Twitter pages.

Make a loan to a small business owner today and help them and their families find a sustainable route out of poverty - www.lendwithcare.org  

More from Lendwithcare in the Philippines | The impact of Typhoon Haiyan

Day 12 and Tracey retells the stories of the Lendwithcare entrepreneurs she has met whilst in the Philippines ...

I had to accept that we were not going to get to Leyte or any of the other worst affected islands due to the bad weather. There has been an area of low pressure over the Philippines for the last couple of weeks which has been causing constant rain and high winds and severe flooding in some areas. 

CARE/Peter Caton

Instead we decided to travel four hours north of Cebu city to meet with one of Lendwithcare’s partners, a Co-operative called FCCT. FCCT have many branches, including two in the north of Cebu which was affected by typhoon Yolanda, as it is known here (if you say typhoon Haiyan people look at you blankly). 

Tracey's original route

First I met with the staff of FCCT who explained all the services they offer to their members, including loans. You can tell from their motto “only having savings breaks the bonds of poverty” that they strongly believe in encouraging their members to save. In fact, they even have a “kiddies savings plan” where children, from the moment they start school to when they finish year six, can save a third of any allowance they get from their parents. When these mini-savers graduate junior school they can withdraw their savings to spend on a graduation dress or new shoes. The interest rate they receive is 5% - I could only dream of finding a savings account that pays that much to my own son in a children’s account in the UK. FFCT also offer a good rate of savings to adults which they pay from the interest they charge on loans. 

Loan repayments are collected by staff every week – they go and visit the borrower to avoid them having to interrupt their business to travel to the office to make their loan repayments. Any profit FCCT makes is returned to their members at the end of the year. As well as savings and loans, FCCT offer mobile money transfer services. 

By the time I finished hearing about FCCT’s services it was the end of a very long day. We had dinner with the FCCT staff and they told me how terrifying it was to be in the middle of such a “super typhoon”. Luckily typhoon Yolanda hit during the day which meant that a lot of people had time to get to an evacuation centre (which in practice are schools or churches). They all said it was the most terrifying experience of their lives and most of the staff had experienced around 70% damage to their own homes. They told me this in a very matter of fact way. Apparently the Philippines experiences an average of 20 typhoons a year so they hadn’t realised quite how bad this one was going to be. After a night in a simple guest house, we breakfasted on the tastiest fried eggs on toast I have ever had – I wish I knew how the chef, who was a member of FCCT, had made them so delicious. We then left the FCCT office to meet some of their members who had been affected by the typhoon. 

First I met Melbina Tuico who has four children. She runs a food stall and as a side line rents DVDs to provide an additional source of income for her family. Both her business and home were completely destroyed during the typhoon. But she needs to feed her family and send kids to school so Melbina immediately moved her business next door to an area outside her sister in law’s house, which is manageable in the short-term. She said that business has been OK since the typhoon since people still come to eat. She provides breakfast lunch and dinner, her customers are neighbours but also people from other villages since she prepares such delicious BBQ food. 

When I asked her about the future she replied “only god knows my future”. She is hoping and praying that someone will help her rebuild her house and restaurant area again. Shelter is her main problem as they are now all sharing her sister in law’s house. The children keep asking when they can go back to their own home. Melbina and her family received some relief goods from humanitarian organisations working in Cebu but she has not been able to get any construction materials. She said she can’t focus on her business properly while she is worrying about whether her house will be rebuilt. I wished her good luck, not knowing quite what could be done for her in the short term. CARE and other relief agencies, who have specialised expertise in emergency shelter relief, are rightly focusing on the most vulnerable who don’t have anywhere else to go. 

However it is very likely that FCCT will offer her what they call a “rehabilitation loan”, which will be on a deferred repayment basis and at a very low interest rate. I asked them to send me details as soon as possible so that we can put it on the lendwithcare as I know our lenders will want to help. 

Stay tuned for more stories from the Philippines here and on our Facebook and Twitter pages.

Make a loan to an entrepreneur trying to build a stable future for themselves and their families today by visiting lendwithcare.org 

Philippines Diary - lendwithcare in the field

As Tracey Horner, Head of Lendwithcare, travels to the Philippines post Typhoon Haiyan we follow her here ... 

DAY ONE
 

Checking-in at Heathrow Airport

Today I am going to the Philippines. And as I leave the comfort of my family and home behind, I am acutely aware of the stark contrast that awaits me as I travel to visit the families and homes of people struck by the strongest typhoon to ever hit landfall - Typhoon Haiyan (known locally as Typhoon Yolanda). I'm sure you can all remember the shock and sadness you felt as the news hit our screens in November last year that a super typhoon was smashing its way through the Philippines, destroying absolutely everything in its wake. Over the last few weeks, we ourselves have experienced the adverse affects of extreme weather and know how utterly destructive it can be and how we stand helpless in the face of it. Although the nature of my work means I have seen and heard a lot about the impact of Typhoon Haiyan over the last month or so, I have absolutely no idea what to expect and I want to share my experiences with you via this short diary.
 
My goal while away is to meet some of the 38 lendwithcare entrepreneurs living in areas devastated by Haiyan and work on a restoration plan with our local partner, SEEDFINANCE. I will be visiting the islands of Leyte and Cebu and visiting some of the worst affected areas, including Tacloban City and Ormoc City.

For news, updates and photos keep an eye on this blog and follow us on the lendwithcare Facebook page and Twitter @lendwithcare & @traceymohabir

Video updates from Togo part two: collecting updates from the field

After the first part of our video updates from Togo in July, the wait is finally over! Here is part two, at last.

In my first blog about my trip to Togo, I mentioned that visiting our microfinance partner, WAGES, was of particular interest to me because of CARE’s long-standing relationship with the institution. However, the main purpose of my trip was to respond to our lenders’ desire for more updates on how their loans have impacted on the lives of the people they have supported.  So I travelled to WAGES to provide the loan officers who work with Lendwithcare some further training on how to provide updates and more specifically how they can use film to bring these updates to life.

The training was led by professional film makers Fiona Molloy and Nik Wood (the people that also put together our fab TV ad!) and I have to say the loan officers really enjoyed learning the tricks of the trade from Fiona and Nik.  They particularly enjoyed learning how shooting different kinds of footage rather than simply zooming in and out can improve a film.

These three women had specific messages they wanted to pass on to the Lendwithcare lenders:

1.  Akouvi Amouzou – a fish monger from Togo. Akouvi told me “it feels good to be able to build my own house, hire staff to increase revenue and have money for when my children are sick”

2. Ama Nyabledzi – a market trader from Togo. Ama proudly announced when we visited her at her stall that “my palm oil is the sweetest on the market!”

3.  TchallaAdjo – a grain seller from Togo. At 69-years-old Tchalla had generated enough income from her business to build her own house, which I was lucky enough to be shown around

By Tracey Horner, Head of Lendwithcare.org

Read the final part of Tracey's video blog from Togo!

Video updates from Togo part one: providing small loans to the financially excluded

In April I travelled to Togo to visit WAGES, our local microfinance partner, and a number of the micro-entrepreneurs we have supported through lendwithcare.org.  It was a particularly interesting trip for me because when I first started working for CARE International back in 1997, the “Women & Associations for Gains both Economic and Social” (WAGES) project was in the process of moving away from its origins as a small-scale group lending programme set-up by CARE and was transforming into an independent Microfinance Institution (MFI). I remember how CARE’s end of project evaluation had concluded that the WAGES project  was having such a positive impact on the lives of poor women and in order to help the many more thousands of people who could benefit from micro-loans, WAGES should became an independent entity.  This is why when we set up our lendwithcare.org initiative in 2010, WAGES was an obvious choice to be one of our very first partners.

Sixteen years on and WAGES has grown into an incredibly successful and committed MFI - reaching more rural clients than any other microfinance provider in Togo and helping these clients (predominantly women) create better and sustainable livelihoods for themselves 

Clients like Abla and Bawana (both market traders) who told me, as women, that it was impossible for them to get fair and affordable credit before they became members of WAGES:

Or Kokou (a farmer) and Kossiwa (a market trader) who said formal banks would never lend money to people like them

By Tracey Horner, Head of Lendwithcare.org

 
Read part two and three of Tracey's video blog from Togo!