Tag Archives: NWTF

Grameen Bank Replication and the Principles of Microfinance

For a brief overview of the GBR (Grameen Bank Replication) methodology and its use by NWTF/Project Dungganon, see here.

Microfinance institutions (MFIs) are often affiliated with larger networks, which help to secure funding, offer back-office services, and provide an operations model. These organizations – Grameen Foundation, FINCA, Accion International, and World Vision, to name a few – partner with MFIs across the world to replicate the model, be it village banking, the Grameen model, or another. These networks span countries and continents, and operate as umbrella organizations for the global microfinance community.

NWTF founder Cecilia del Castillo with Muhammad Yunus.

Negros Women for Tomorrow Foundation (NWTF) is affiliated with Grameen Bank. Its founder, president, and CEO, Dr. Cecilia del Castillo, received her doctorate in psychology in the United States before returning to the Philippines to create an NGO that would serve women in her native island of Negros Occidental. A meeting with Muhammad Yunus convinced her to found NWTF in 1984, with the goal to “help women achieve self-sufficiency and self-reliance, particularly in Negros Occidental’s low-income and depressed urban and rural communities.” In 1989, NWTF introduced Project Dungganon (“honorable”) and Dungganon Bank Inc., NWTF’s traditional microcredit lending program, which most people associate with microfinance. (In reality, microfinance describes a much larger suite of financial services, including savings accounts, insurance, and rural energy delivery, capital equipment assistance, and personal loans, but that is for another post). Continue reading →

The Galvez Family, Pt. 1

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Success in microfinance is difficult to measure because progress occurs incrementally and may take a generation or more to manifest. Usually, the benefits of microfinance – improvements in healthcare, education, and quality of life – are only visible over a longer timeframe. For industry practitioners and evangelists, the tangible success stories among recipients of microloans are valuable proof of its efficacy. On a recent trip to Valladolid, I was fortunate enough to meet one of the most successful NWTF clients in the foundation’s 25-year history.

The Galvez family around the dinner table

The visit to the Galvez family farm was the last stop on a three-day trek through Pontevedra and the surrounding communities. The borrowers I’d met previously mostly operate small businesses that are reliant – directly or indirectly – on the rice- and sugar-farming industries that dominates the region. Homes are modest in size, made from bamboo, aluminum and concrete, with few rooms and, more often than not, earthen floors. And of course, like 80% of NWTF’s clientele, the women live below the poverty line. The Galvez family – Milagros, the matriarch, Lorito, her husband, and their three children, Lawrence, Lori, and Lori Mae – once lived a similar life, until a loan from Project Dungganon (NWTF’s microcredit loan program) allowed them to grow their small sari-sari store into an empire. Eight years ago, the family lived in a house made of bamboo. With the profits of their many businesses, the Galvez’ were able to upgrade to something better.

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In The Field

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The road to a borrowers home

I spent the last three days in “the field,” a term used to describe the front lines of microfinance where the money is distributed to the clients of the banks. Beginning early Tuesday morning, I set out for the town of Valladolid, a rural municipality about 50 km from Bacolod City. The road snakes along the coast through increasingly less urban communities, until reaching Pontevedra, where the NWTF (Negros Women for Tomorrow Foundation) Valladolid branch is located. Linda, the branch manager and former loan officer, took me to see the first of 15 borrowers we would try to track down over the course of the three-day trip (with a 67% success rate). Riding in the metal grates on the back of a tricycle, where I’d spend most of my trip, we rode to small village called a barangay to interview several women about their business and loan. The community here is small, and stopping for directions usually produced a guide that brought us directly to the home of the borrower. Home constructions vary from 2-3 room bamboo nipa huts, to shanties with roofs of corrugated aluminum and floors of dirt, to cement frames with electricity, running water, and decorations on the walls. Over the course of the week, I’d see all types represented. Housing loans are popular among borrowers, and many homes have been built with loans from NWTF.

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