The Thirteenth Post

Regular readers will recall that a month or so ago I was doing some fundraising to help a guy called Michel meet the cost of his college fees for this semester. Many of the smarter and more attractive of my friends and family agreed to make a donation (sorry, couldn’t resist that – you know I kid). We ended up raising quite a bit more than the amount needed for the college fees, so I promised to find another worthy cause or causes to which to donate the leftover cash.

I thought you might like an update on what’s happened since then and where that money went. In Michel’s case first, it was revealed that he actually spells his name Mitchell, although he pronounces it Michel. My bad. And, thanks to the amazingly generous support of a certain anonymous rich aunt who lives in New York, and who shall be granted eternal good karma from this day forth, young Mitchell’s college fees for the entirety of his course are now covered also. He promises to work hard and one day become a high-flying New York executive himself.

As for the leftover cash – $901 at last count – $200 went to the school where one of my fellow volunteers, Katrina, is teaching, to buy books, pens etc (Kat tells me they operate at a text book to student ratio of about 1:40 at the moment). The rest of it I managed to turn into a little microfinance project of my own, the story of which I will now regale you with while, I hope, simultaneously satisfying the curiosity of at least my sister, and possibly some unknown others, as to what exactly I’ve been doing with myself these past two months.

I wanted to use this trip as a chance to try something different, and I settled on microfinance because it’s something I’ve had an interest in for a while. I was told before coming that there were two microfinance programs in the area where I’d be living – a small pilot program at a place called North Gem Community Resource Centre, and a more established one at a place called Ugunja Community Resource Centre. It sounded to me then like I’d be better off spending my time at the more established one rather than the pilot – since what did I know about building a new microfinance program? – and this was reinforced when I got to Kenya and visited the two Centres. I set up my timetable so that I was spending two days per week at North Gem, and three days at Ugunja – and still wondered whether I’d have enough work to even fill two days at North Gem.

As it’s turned out, by far the more interesting – and I hope useful – work has been at North Gem. I learned that the difficulty with working in an established program like Ugunja is that all its systems and structures are pretty much in place and running, it has its own staff to do the work that’s generated by those systems and structures, and there’s not all that much for a blow-in Australian volunteer with no background in microfinance to do. It was still a good experience at Ugunja because I got to learn how a microfinance program can work – and that was enhanced by spending two days in a proper microfinance bank called K-Rep – but I can’t say they benefited much from me being there. Also it was much like work at home, sitting at a computer and writing reports all day (albeit with roosters crowing outside, which doesn’t happen much at Governor Macquarie Tower).

North Gem by contrast was a much more novel experience. I spent a lot more time out of the office, tramping around farms that were being funded through the microfinance program, and even did some seeding and hoeing myself. I got to play a role in setting up the program to shift from a pilot to a permanent operation, including by writing a new constitution for the organisation. Most significantly, it gave me the opportunity to create a little microfinance program of my own.

Kevin is 23 years old and an orphan. His dad died when he was 16, and his mum when he was 20. He has a brother and sister, both still at school, for whom he is the sole carer. He’s a resourceful guy but has no qualifications as he was forced to leave school after his father died to go out and make money for the family driving a bicycle taxi. When his mum died also, he had to give up that job and come back home to look after his siblings. Since that time he’s been scraping by however he can. Kevin talked about setting up a car wash to pick up all the passing traffic on the main highway to Uganda, which runs through the village. Of course, he didn’t have the money to do it.

Kevin needed money for his car wash. The women in the North Gem microfinance program needed money to expand the program beyond a pilot. This gave me an idea: I would loan Kevin the money to set up the car wash, but do it through the North Gem program and require him to pay the money back directly to that program, at which point it would belong to the program and be available to lend out to new members. This way, the program coordinator and members had an incentive to recover the money from Kevin, creating a mechanism to encourage repayment without me needing to be there to monitor things. Kevin would get his car wash, the North Gem women would get the funds they needed to expand their program, and everyone would live happily ever after. I ran this by the microfinance program coordinator and then Kevin, and they were both all for it. So I set about designing my own microloan.

Most of my last few weeks in Kenya were taken up with organising the loan. I worked with Kevin to develop a realistic budget, measure projected income against expenses, establish a repayment schedule and agree the terms and conditions for the loan. I went out with him to buy the equipment – high pressure hose, water tank, pipes, fittings etc. When the hose proved too powerful for the electricity supply in the village and shorted out four fuses, I went out again with him to exchange it for another one with its own generator. And happily, the week before I left Kenya (I’m now sitting on a beach in Zanzibar – be jealous) Kevin had set up his new business and was washing his first vehicles.












Of course, there’s a risk to this. As with any loan, there’s a chance the money won’t be repaid. If that happens, I’m afraid I’ll have blown your dough and I’ll hope you’ll forgive me. But I figure, even if the loan falls over, if it means that a 23 year-old orphan with no qualifications and two younger siblings now has the skills and the means to properly care for his family, it’s still a success. And if it doesn’t fall over – if it is fully repaid and the North Gem microfinance program can permanently establish itself with the new funds – well then high fives all round.