Tuesday, May 15, 2012

VHI Day 1, Micro-Enterprise, Jacie (guest blogger)

Jambo!

My name is Jacie and I'm a now graduated communication major on this trip. While in Chogoria I am working with Village HopeCore International along with Morgan and Darla. Today we had our first adventure. We were initially told we were going to be picked up at around 10am this morning... The first vehicle for VHI showed up to pick up Beth and Cindy, the teachers and Chris left for the school and the three of us remained at the guest house... 40 minutes later, our ride showed up. Welcome to Africa time ;) However, we did not care and enjoyed exploring a bit of the grounds and waiting for our driver.

Our drivers name is Micheni, and I probably spelt that wrong but that's okay. Micheni works for VHI and brought us up to their office. Carlo, a Californian peace core volunteer, joined us at the office and was our guide for the rest of the day. I was personally very grateful for Carlo because although Micheni speaks English very well, it is still heavily accented. Carlo was able to explain to us what exactly we were going to be doing and answer any and all questions we had throughout the day.

We traveled out of Chogoria to six applicant's homes. VHI currently has about 10 merry-go-rounds (a group) for clients and each merry-go-round consists of 12 people. The homes we were visiting today had all just gone through the education and necessary training before they could receive the loan and today was all about discussing and creating business plans and essentially performing a risk analysis. For us business/business communication kids-- this was super interesting! To begin the interviewing process, Carlo asked some basic questions: names, spouses names, children's names & ages, expenses (school fees, personal expenses), etc. He then dove into questions such as: income, profitability, and any asssets that they had. He would also ask what businesses are currently established? All of the homes in the merry-go-round we visisted today had: a dairy farm (by farm I mean one maybe two cows), banana plants, and tea plants. Others had pumpkin plants, pineapple plants and coffee! Pineapple and coffee plants were really fun to see, as well as tea, because I have never seen them before! I knew that pineappples grew in the ground but had no idea they sprouted up out of the center of a plant. Neat!

One of the families- the ones with all of the forementioned plants, took us to see those plants which all grow on, get this, the side of a mountain. No lie. We hiked down the side of this mountain to see where these plants were. He pointed out his brother's coffee plants and then to his own which were located in the valley below us, about 500 yds, we decided we weren't going down there! Nevertheless, it was so cool to see & the view from the side of the mountain was absolutely breathtaking. This family also had a little boy following them around as we walked around-- not sure if he was their child or their grandchild, but we are positive we were the first white people he had ever seen. He was very shy and kept his distance despite our smiling and waving. Although-- right before we left, Morgan dug into her purse and found a fruitsnack package and held it out to him. Without hesistation he ran over, grabbed the bag and returned to the saftey of the legs he was hiding behind.

Returning to the interview-- if the families had cows, Carlo would ask how many liters the cows produced per day. Ideally, VHI wanted these cows to produce between 6 and 12 liters per day. Cows in Kenya cost about $340 US dollars and goats cost $20 US dollars... quite a sticker shock (positive) compared to the US. But nevertheless, this is something that these families need loans for as well as to repair the pens for the cows and to feed them. Because the majority of Kenyans drink tea and drink their tea with milk... milk is in high demand and obviously calcium is good for the body... Cows are encouraged!! Along with the feed, each home is required to have a 1/2 acre of this special grass, my mind is slipping the name of it, per cow... so two cows-- 1 acre. Again, this is the ideal situation. If the families are approved for the loan, they are given the money (we get to participate in that on Thursday!!) and VHI will return two weeks later to make sure that they have followed through with their business plan and that they have invested where they said they would invest. The merry-go-rounds and families that are a part of them have two years plus a 2 month grace period to pay back their loans at a 9% interest rate (most of the banks in Kenya that do micro-enterprises have a 20% interest rate and a much shorter payback time). They are also required to put away 100 ksh (shillings) per month in a "savings" account that they will receive in return when and if their loan is repaid in whole.

Well- I think that is the jist of what we experienced today at VHI. We have so much more that will happen this week and in the next week & a half. Can't wait to see what we learn next!!

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