Work on this initiative is progressing nicely. We’ve just received work that CRS is working with a  partner, the Senegal National Microfinance Association,  that is reaching beyond its borders, training practitioners from Uganda and Kenya in the Progress out of Poverty Index methodology. http://www.progressoutofpoverty.org/blog/apsfd-training-kenya This collaboration represents an important transfer of knowledge that will help improve the effectiveness of microfinance in these East African nations.

12:23 pm I call Alex, a chauffeur usually based in Bong County but currently in Monrovia, to ask him if he knows how to get to Nya-ta. He doesn’t.

12:25 I try to reach two of our field agents on the phone. They are in the middle of the bush and so don’t get my calls.

Community members in Gboimue in northwest Liberia go through the process of creating an microfinance savings group, they work out a constitution. Here SILC members are voting on a component of their SILC constitution. Bernice Yalley helps set up the programs. Photo by Bernice Yalley/CRS

1:08 pm I call Kenny, an agricultural specialist based in our field office in Bong County to ask her how to get to Nya-ta. The phone cuts.

1:25 pm Kenny calls me back but runs out of phone credit (most phones are prepaid calling plans here) and so I call her back. She gives me directions.

1:30 pm The driver and I take the dirt road leading to the village. We stop and ask villagers where the town of Nya-ta is. They all pronounce it Nya-la with an “l” instead of a “t”. The driver and I think that it’s just a local vernacular that they don’t pronounce it the way it is spelled. They tell us that it’s still a long way off.

1:45 We reach the village but the field agents are not there nor has the community seen them. I am peeved.

1:45 – 2 pm We turn around in circles a few more times asking where this village is and wondering aloud why mankind is so evil as to lie to innocent young international development fellows about their whereabouts.

2:30 pm We arrive at the CRS field office in Phebe and there is the SILC program officer Pa Willie. We call the field agents and I hand over the phone because I am annoyed and don’t understand what is being said. Pa Willie learns from them that they are currently leaving Nya-ta and heading to the village of Gonmenyeayei for tomorrow’s training.

3:00 Me, a new driver and Pa Willie all climb into a pickup truck to head over to this village. The car won’t start so the security guards all push the car to engage the starter.

3:30 pm We are on the road to the village and meet our two field agents, Rosetta and Sao on their motorbike. I get out of the car and swing on the open door Spider Man style to avoid careening down the ditch. Evidently there are two similar sounding villages: Nyala and Nyata. When we were looking around for the village in question, the villagers thought we meant Nyala. The one we were actually looking for was another 5 kilometers beyond. No one knew that for some reason.

3:45 We drive back to the village where the field agents will be sleeping tonight to begin working in the morning. The men in the community were in the process of constructing a thatched shelter out of bamboo expressly for this training. They are really taking it seriously. I need to come out and sleep in one of these villages some night.

Bernice Yalley is a CRS fellow working in Liberia on savings-led microfinance projects. Her posts appear Mondays on Voices.

Like many of its successful clients, TPC had humble beginnings. Initially launched in 1995 as a microfinance project with funding from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the McKnight Foundation and CRS, TPC has distributed $112 million in loans to 710,886 people since its inception in 1995. “Our clients are women and men, in villages and in the city,” says Chuon Sophal, CEO of TPC. “But they have one thing in common: they are grateful that TPC’s low interest rates give them an alternative to moneylenders.”

From an initial client base of 356 in 1995, TPC had grown to 29,203 clients by the end of 2002. In order to better meet the growing demand for TPC’s services, CRS sought NBC regulatory approval from the National Bank of Cambodia (NBC) to transform TPC into a registered, licensed microfinance company in late 2002. Since 2003, TPC has been a leading Cambodian MFI, successfully achieving a ‘double bottom line’ of positive social impact for the Cambodian poor while maintaining a rigorous business orientation.

TPC clients have used their loans, which typically begin at $125, to expand their farming activities or start businesses like bakeries or bicycle repair shops.

“TPC has grown so much that a sale and transfer to a major financial institution such as DWM was essential for its long-term success,” says CRS’ Rich Balmadier, who joined TPC’s board of directors in 2002 and was, until the sale of TPC, the Chairman of TPC’s Board. “DWM is well-positioned to take TPC to the next level, helping ever more Cambodians escape poverty, and expanding the range of financial services TPC can provide to poor Cambodians.”

On February 23, Catholic Relief Services will host a ceremony marking the transfer. Attendees from the National Bank of Cambodia (NBC), the Ministry of Commerce (MOC), USAID, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, DWM and other Cambodian Microfinance Institutions are expected at a reception at the Sunway Hotel.

“We’re happy to be taking the lead at a time when TPC is so poised for growth,” says Fernanda Lima, DWM Vice President for Private Equity.

“This is really a celebration of a venture that worked, and continues to work,” says Greg Auberry, CRS’ Country Representative for Southeast Asia. “Tens of thousands of Cambodians have created better lives for their families thanks to TPC.”

The village of Worla, though not expansive, has decided to create two savings clubs. It would have been difficult to manage a club of 50 people and so they neatly bisected themselves. The first group has called themselves Remember and is now going through the process of electing a chairperson. I am one of the designated vote collectors and so I am standing outside, discretely hidden in the shade of a plantain tree with one of the field agents, Pa Willie. Remember participants file past and drop rocks into either my or Pa Willie’s bowl voting for their candidate of choice. I laugh as an old woman rocks her hips and dances away after placing her stone. In the decision between the two candidates, a woman or a man, the woman won by a landslide. Evidently she is someone the rest of the community recognizes as a strong leader, someone hardworking and well respected. It doesn’t matter that she can neither read nor write. She can lay down the law.

Members of the second group, Love, were absent on this the first day of meeting because they had to rush someone by road to the local hospital in Phebe, maybe 15 kilometers away. I was asked if we saw a posse of people carrying someone in a hammock, I said no. The driver hadn’t noted it either. I learned on the second day I visited the community that the sick person, a woman, had died in labor before she could reach the hospital. Because she had passed away while carrying a baby in her womb, the community would not bury her in the village. She is laid to rest along a lonely stretch of road in an unmarked common grave. The villagers were understandably subdued this morning but continued with the training. In communities such as these, where death is a tangible part of their lives, living and dying, past and present, young and old feel as if they are inextricably linked in a slowly twisting circle.

Bernice Yalley is a CRS fellow working in Liberia on savings-led microfinance projects. Her posts appear Mondays on the CRS blog.

Does uncertainty reflect weakness? I’m a girl; maybe I should act tougher than I am. Is my voice too high and accent too American? Am I being culturally sensitive? Wait, am I supposed to be dogmatic? What Would Gordon Gecko Do?
The one thing that I have learned is that miscommunication is universal. Add into that mix a different dialect and culture, bad phone reception, thick accents (mine and theirs), no wireless network, no email confirmation, no fax machines, no street signs, house addresses or electricity and a lot gets lost in translation.

Bernice Yalley is a CRS fellow working in Liberia on savings-led microfinance projects. Her posts appear Mondays on Voices of CRS.

On the road to Gboimue, we cross a typical log bridge in rural Liberia. Photo by Bernice Yalley/CRS

Roads in Liberia are amongst some of the worst in West Africa and driving on them to get to a project site is no joke. While negotiating in heavy duty, sports utility vehicles with standard gear shifts, there are life lessons to be learned:

- In most instances, take the path that has already been tread before you. It makes your going that much smoother.

- Don’t veer too far into the brush. The ground may look solid but often a deep ditch is hidden just beyond your sight.

- Sometimes, it’s easier to go through a rough patch of road than to expend energy trying to get around it. Just change your gear and tactic and dip carefully into the hole.

- Don’t flinch or cede your space when you see another car coming. The other car will adjust itself to accommodate you.

- Show no fear. Even if the bridge ahead of you is effectively two planks of wood connecting one side of the road to the other.

- Even if you can’t see what’s coming around the bend, don’t slow your pace. Just honk to let others know that you are coming.

- Finally, yes, you should feel like you are the baddest thing on the face of this planet because you, frail, inexperienced thing that you are, are bouncing along in over a ton of fine Japanese engineered iron, steel and aluminum along dusty, craggy, war torn roads. Go you! Go you!

Thousands of pounds of fine machinery carefully maneuvering over a typical log bridge in rural Liberia. Photo by Bernice Yalley/CRS

Bernice Yalley is a CRS fellow working in Liberia on savings-led microfinance projects. Her posts appear Mondays on the CRS blog.

Life is in the details, or so I’ve been told.

It’s the little things that make an impact. That last cookie that tips the scale. That one smile that brightens a day. That extra 25 cents saved a day that makes a difference in a bank account. The little things.

So, in doing this community led microfinance project, I am operating on the faith that the small things will make a difference. That a small number of staff will be able to churn through over 30 villages spreading their message to over 700 people that saving a meager $1.50 a month will result in big things. Like eventually having the ability to give loans for larger investments. Like having money as a buffer in the case of an emergency. In Liberia though, a country still reeling from the aftershocks of 14 years of civil war, a little thing like a savings and lending club, can mean learning to communicate and trust each other. The little things.

“So it’s time for a global microsavings movement. Poor countries should ease the regulations (such as requirements for banking licenses) that make it hard for nonprofits to operate microsavings programs.

“Hugh Aprile, a Catholic Relief Services official here, noted that savings schemes are very cheap to start because no capital is used to provide loans. ‘It’s people using their own money,’ he said, ‘to build far more than they ever thought they could.’”

Kristof met recently with CRS regional information officer Robyn Fieser and talked about savings programs. Here’ the full story..

If you consider microfinance synonymous with “micro loans”–small amounts of money lent to help start businesses (for example)–you need to check out microfinance savings programs.

Two recent stories explain how micro savings programs work and the tremendous benefits they bring to families who are otherwise left out of most banking systems.

Debbie DeVoe recently wrote about a CRS savings program helping farmers in Tanzania break the cycle of poverty.

Lane Hartill’s savings story shows that savings programs offer more than fiancial benefits.

Last week I took the bus seven hours to Mongu in Western Province of Zambia. I would be catching a ride back with co-workers coming up through Sesheke & Shangombo. Our goal was to gain approval for the SILC project from the Director of Caritas of the Diocese of Mongu, CRS’s preferred partner of implementation in Western Province. The director also happens to be local royalty, meaning his thoughts carry more weight than the average Joe. If we did not receive approval, the project would not be going forward, no matter how beneficial it could be or how well it fit into our other programming.

We wanted to create SILC groups in conjunction with the nutritional groups and agricultural cooperatives that are already in place in five communities one-to-two hours outside of Mongu town. Not only would this have the normal benefits of SILC of increased savings, financial literacy and access to capital, but it would also bring cohesion to these existing groups, strengthening them: true program synergy.

Check out David’s complete blog post and accompanying videos here.

David Vosburg is currently a International Development Fellow at Catholic Relief Services based in Lusaka, Zambia. He is focused on growing CRS’s micro-savings program and providing support for costing analysis and compliance audits.

It works. According to the story: “The kids are often surprised at their own success, Stanger said. ‘Their jaws drop when they count the money after they’ve done their sale,’ she said.”

“The Catechism Club also incorporates teaching about what CRS does and whom they serve, but Stanger thinks the microloan business project is an education in itself. ‘I really hope that they learn that what Catholic Relief Services does by helping others by giving them a loan, that they know it really works, and that they can help other people by starting their small business,’ she said.”

See the full story here.