Blanca Méndez works at Oikocredit’s international office in Amersfoort, a lovely, green city in the heart of the Netherlands. We at MicroPlace know her as we work closely with Oikocredit on a daily basis to source many of the listings that you see on MicroPlace.  Blanca recently went to South America and wrote a series of blog posts on this trip. You can see all her posts here.

Not only do microentrepreneurs stay loyal to a microfinance institutions (MFI) for years: they stay loyal for generations. I did not realize it until I met Juana Mayta Wanka, her son Leonardo Torres and his wife Karina Cori in La Paz, Bolivia. 

It was not easy to find their house. With much effort, the car rode up the very steep hill on the border of La Paz city. “There, that is the bakery,” said the FIE loan officer. While the loan officer rang the doorbell, I looked around for a bakery sign. The view down to the city was amazing! I was trying to find Oikocredit’s office in the jungle of buildings 500 meters below, when the small door opened, and Doña Juana greeted us a lovely smile. She is 63, but she crossed the garage and walked up the stairs to the second floor much quicker than all of us.

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Rachel Aram is a journalist working with MicroPlace.  She recently returned from Central Asia where she documented microfinance in the field. You can see the stories she captured here.  She can be found most mornings with her son Thomas at Bernie’s Coffee in San Francisco.

“Raise your hand if you know where Kyrgyzstan is?” I ask the benchload of “work from home professionals” loitering at Bernie’s Coffee in San Francisco. Notice how the group suddenly stares in unison at their recyclable coffee cups. I continue to fight with my jet lagged 7 month old and a jar of organic peas and smile, smugly. Our absence on the bench was noted by this group and I was SO excited to show off my son’s full page Kyrgez visa. We are, of course, educated, affluent, SRI types. I expected at least a glint of recognition, but no.  Ah hell. I admit. I didn’t know where Kyrgyzstan was two months ago. I didn’t know about any of the tiny struggling post Soviet countries see-sawing between cultural history, communist identity, Islam, and a healthy obsession with sexy women’s footwear. More on that later. I begrudgingly admit to googling most of my pertinent preparatory information.
 

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Mr Aziz offers me the obligatory cup of tea in his office and, even though I have already had five cups of tea that day, I graciously accept as “no” is just not an option in a Pakistani business meeting.  It would be like saying, “No, I don’t think I will breathe any of your oxygen for the rest of the meeting as you smell bad.”  It’s an insult mixed in with breaking some law of physics.

As my tea is served, Mr Aziz tells me that the PPAF, the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund started in 2000 with the intention of breaking from the traditional microfinance mentality in Pakistan which was too non-profity for him.  He’s seen too many NGOs offer a boatload of services to poor people - how to read classes, free bednets, the kitchen sink - and just tack on microfinance as an afterthought.  The PPAF is business oriented, keeping a hard eye on the bottom line.  (more…)

The big concern about today’s financial crisis is not that investment bankers may lose their jobs, but that it may spill over to Main Street.  People worry that if all the banks are collapsing or hoarding capital so that they won’t collapse, who is going to lend money to businesses?  Businesses need capital so that they can do what businesses do best:  make profit and provide jobs.  Without capital to grease the system, the core fundamentals of an economy, well, just freeze up. 

Well, that’s what it’s like every day of the year in the urban slums of Bangalore, Manila, and Rio. You see, without basic capital, just as our economy shuts down, so does theirs.  Without a little bit of capital, shop owners can’t buy inventory, tailors can’t afford a new sewing machine, farmers can’t afford fertilizer.  (more…)

It is October. All over India, people clebrate Navarathri -nine nights dedicated to the veneration of the divine feminine Shakti, meaning sacred force, power or energy.  Shakti is the spirit of action, of movement, the dynamic principle through which the divine is manifest in the world. During Navarathri she is celebrated as Durga (power), Saraswati (the essence of self) and Lakshmi (prosperity). 

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A while back, eBay / MicroPlace hosted “Voices from the Field” for the Silicon Valley Microfinance Network.  One of the speakers, Jacqueline Mwaba from WORTH / Pact in Africa, gave a fantastic talk about women in microfinance.  You can’t invest in WORTH on MicroPlace, but the talk was just that cool that I had to highlight it here.

Jackie Mwaba - Microfinance for women in Africa

“And with your great help, we will be able to grow and help more poor people,” Edet says with a beaming smile.

I smile and ask him about his client base. His new microfinance organization, launched just 3 months ago in Lagos, Nigeria, already has acquired 300 micro-depositors. Impressive.

A typical micro-deposit customer might be someone who sells yams on the side of the road in a wheelbarrow. He picks the yams up outside the city, wheels them to what he thinks would be a good sales corner and then spends a long day trying to sell yams. In a day, he can make about 500 Naira, or about $4. After daily necessities, he might have fifty cents or so to save. Save for a month and at the end, maybe he can buy a new pair of pants or shoes. (more…)