Category Archives: Microfinance

Posts about the practice of microfinance

Solar Energy in the Developing World

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This is a journal about the practice and theory of microfinance, and, more broadly, international economic development and poverty alleviation globally.  If you’d like to get new posts sent to your inbox, please sign up, or subscribe to to my RSS feed.  Thanks.


In an earlier post, I talked about green products and the concept of the triple bottom line.  Environmental cookstoves save money, save lives, and produce less carbon emissions.  Believe it or not, black carbon, or soot from cookstoves in developing countries, is the number-two contributor to global warming.  These more efficient stoves pay dividends.  But this is not the only green product serving the developing world.  Solar products – lanterns, cell-phone charging stations, DVD players, and even micro-utilities – offer a cheap, alternative means of energy delivery in the third world.

Much of the Philippines - the areas in red - is less than 75% electrified.

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Talisay to Bago: A Day’s Work

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On Wednesday morning, I woke up at 7:00 to get ready for call I had with some head honchos at Kiva about how we can put solar energy loans up on the Kiva website.  After that, I had to talk to the Kiva microfinance partnerships manager for Asian MFIs about an Excel model he built that automatically generates profiles to be uploaded onto the Kiva website.  I am modifying it to fit the specific needs of NWTF, but the process of following his logic is complicated and tedious.  I needed to go straight to the source.  By 9:30, I was ready to officially start the day.

Awaiting the drill.

The military dentists helped with the mission.

Last Saturday, a group of 26 Canadians came to Bacolod as part of a dental mission organized by the Rotary Club of Vancouver.  There are five dentists, a handful of hygienists, and others that are distributing eyeglasses or acting as gophers.  The mission is being held in a gymnasium in the city of Talisay, about 20 minutes north of Bacolod.  The group sees between 200 and 300 clients per day, performing mostly extractions with some fillings.  Clients hail from mostly the surrounding branches, which also happen to be first branches to post Kiva clients.  I had heard that the clients from Hinigaran branch would be at the mission on Wednesday.  I’d been meaning to get down to Hinigaran for a round of client interviews, but hadn’t had the chance.  Also, collecting information for Kiva journals usually means a loan officer or branch manager has to take you around to each client – a nuisance, to be sure.  So, armed with a list of Kiva clients in Hinigaran, I caught a ride in one of the vans heading that way. Continue reading →

The Problem of Rural Education in the Philippines

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In this journal, I have discussed the relationship between education, poverty alleviation, and economic development. The link is critical and the three are self-reinforcing.  Education creates greater opportunities for the youth, who go on to work decent jobs in cities like Bacolod, Manila, and Cebu.  The children remit money back to the parents, who spend on home improvements and the tuition fees for the younger siblings.  College-educated individuals are much less likely to end up impoverished (about 1 in 44).  Trade schools also create opportunities, with only one in 10 people with post-secondary degrees living below the poverty line.  Unfortunately, the ratios drop precipitously after that.  One in three high school graduates and half of elementary school grads are impoverished.  Here are the sobering education statistics: Continue reading →

What I Do: Borrower Interviews

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As a Kiva Fellow, I go to the field to interview borrowers about the status of their loan and talk about the business, the family, and their dreams for the future.  Usually I do a short write-up to update the Kiva lenders, but sometimes I go overboard and write an essay.  This is not representative of most journal entries, but I found her to be such an interesting client that I wanted to share it.  I titled this journal update “Glenda’s Business and the Economics of a Half-Hectare Farm.”  It only went out to 13 people, so I’m hoping for a larger audience here*: Continue reading →

Green Products and the Triple Bottom Line

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The core philosophy of microfinance is the double bottom line.  It refers to the goals of the organization, which are a) to be profitable, and b) to be socially impactful.  But there is another philosophy known as the triple bottom line, which adds ecological impact.  Sometimes referred to as “people, planet, profit,” TBL promotes an environmentally-friendly approach to development.  To that end, there are a host of products that serve each of the three goals.  In this post, I will talk about one in particular: environmental cookstoves. Continue reading →

Repost: Yunus v. Compartamos

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In a shameless attempt to fill the gap left by me not having any material, I am reposting an old favorite.  Also, it is going up on the Kiva Fellows blog this morning, so it made sense to put it up here again.

Within the international development community, a debate for the heart of the movement came to the fore two years ago with the IPO of Compartamos, the largest microfinance institution in Mexico.  Divisive and controversial, Compartamos’ decision to sell shares and publicly list on an exchange is perhaps the clearest manifestation of where the two sides diverge.  One side, led by Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005, contends that, at its core, the sole fundamental mission of microfinance is poverty alleviation.  The other side argues that the goal must be maximizing profit and, more specifically, ROE (return on equity) – extending services to a previously unbanked population and expanding via revenue growth.  Just about everyone has an opinion on the decision and, at the very least, it allows for a great philosophical and economic debate about the most effective way to assist the billions of people who live below the poverty line. Continue reading →

Branch Rollout in Cebu

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The ubiquitous “Principles of Dungganon” sign.

This weekend I went to Cebu, an island east of Negros, for the Kiva rollout in the NWTF branches. I figured the place would be ideal for my photography, especially since I’d gotten hold of the best dslr under $1000 that one could lay their hands on. I traveled as part of a five-person team, including Massah, the photography consultant, Raymond, the research manager, Jubert, the IT manager, and Presy, the Kiva coordinator.  Pocholo, a friend of Raymond’s, needed a lift to Cebu and caught a ride with us.  The six of us loaded the infamous red van and left at 7 AM on Thursday morning.  The road to the port in San Carlos normally takes 3.5 hours, but we chose to take a shortcut through the mountains on a winding two-lane road cut neatly into the side of a cliff.  Unfortunately, by the time we arrived at the port, the ferry was full.  The next ferry didn’t leave until 2:30 in the afternoon, so we drove three hours south along a coastal road to another port in Aclan, where the ferry leaves every hour and takes 30 minutes to cross.  Once on the other side, we had another three-hour trip back up north.  Twelve hours later, we arrived in Cebu City and checked into a hotel.

Our route, highlighted by the black arrows

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The Journalist

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This week Negros Women for Tomorrow published it’s first newsletter in several years.  I know the girl putting it together, so she gave me 250 words (shortened first to 150, then 100).  Here it is:

Over the past year, Kiva has partnered with MFIs like NWTF across the Philippines to bring microfinance to the masses and offer people before the chance to participate. NWTF and Kiva joined forces six short months ago, funding a total of $150,000 in Project Dungganon loans to date.  In the next few months, we hope to be lending that amount each and every month.  Let me tell you how it works.

Kiva’s mission is to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty.  Stated another way, we harness the outreach capabilities of the Internet to tap into people’s desire to help.  You post profiles of entrepreneurs to the Kiva site, and our lenders invest $25 or more until the loan is filled.  On average it takes just three days to fund an NWTF loan.  Since we started in 2005, we have over 600,000 lenders that have made nearly $120 million in loans to 300,000 entrepreneurs.

As of today, Kiva lenders have financed 350 loans for Project Dungganon members.  Together, we have been able to share the experiences of your clients with lenders all over the world.  We at Kiva are excited about the partnership and looking forward to watching it develop in the coming years.

Short and sweet.  I think I have the blood of a journalist flowing through my veins.

Working Toward a Common Goal

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A microfinance institution is a business.  Like any business, MFIs are competitive with one another.  While MFIs currently serve only a portion of the poverty pie, they compete for existing clients.  It is important to create a product that appeals to the client and offer high levels of service in order to keep your clients.  This is particularly true in the Philippines, where things are relationship-driven and the people are emotional.  For example, NWTF has an issue with client attrition because it sometimes has difficulty distributing new loans immediately after the old one has termed out.  The women feel hurt and slighted when this happens, and drop out of the program as a result.  In turn, they will join another MFI.  That was a tangential anecdote to emphasize the competitive nature of this business.  Yet this past week I attended a conference in Manila on “Operationalizing Social Performance Monitoring,” which highlighted the cooperative nature of microfinance institutions.  It was hosted by the Microfinance Council of the Philippines and attended by MFIs from all across the country. Continue reading →

SMEs in the Philippines

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This is the second post in a three-part series on SMEs.

In an earlier post, I discussed another area of development – SMEs – that is both important for creating sustained growth, and has recently attracted interest from investors.  The Philippines is also placing a lot of emphasis on this area of development.

The Philippines is actually in good shape regarding SMEs, as it has an abundant labor pool.  The country has 800,000 registered businesses, of which ~7% are classified as either small (10-99 employees, $60K to $300K in assets) or medium (100-199 employees, $300K to $2M in assets).  Only 0.4% of the business earn above the $2M mark.  The remaining 92% are microenterprises, which have between 1 and 9 employees and earn less than $60K in assets.  These MSMEs (including microenterprises) account for 70% of the labor force and 30% of the output of the country.

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