Archives for posts with tag: microcredit

Necessary Angels

December 12, 2008 //

National Geographic has an excellent article online called “Necessary Angels” about a program in India called Jamkhed that is training community health workers. The health workers live in villages where there is little or no other medical care available. They focus on preventative treatment since the great portion of maladies that afflict the poor in these villages are preventable. Interestingly, the article explores the opinion of several people who say that doctors are not the answer because they earn their money off treating, rather than preventing, disease.

Furthermore, this indigenous program, which was started by Raj and Mabelle Arole, has taken on a radical social change experiment. The village health workers that are trained are all members of the “untouchable” caste. The caste system is officially banned in India, but continues to thrive in rural villages. By placing “untouchables” in positions of authority, Jamkhed has turned the social paradigm on its head. The women from the “untouchable” caste gain confidence and the demonstration of their efficacy breaks down the superstitious and stupid social mores.

There’s an interesting point made about the growth of this program. In 38 years of existence, they have trained health workers in 300 villages. That figure shocked me because of how few villages they have reached in such a long time. Contrast that with a program like BRAC, which is mentioned in the article and has been around for a similar amount of time. BRAC has set up “essentially a substitute for a government health care system, with 70,000 village health workers in 70,000 villages.” The response from Jamkhed as to why it has not scaled up is that they have expanded to include other services beyond health. That argument simply does not hold water in the face of BRAC’s success at providing health care, education, housing and financial services. It sounds to me like Jamkhed is lacking either the will from management or a sustainable model to allow them to scale.

Accompanying the article there is, as you would expect from National Geographic, a wonderful photo gallery as well as other supplementary material.

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Helping Kenya Become Whole Again

January 28, 2008 //

After spending two months in Kenya during the run-up to their presidential elections, I was greatly saddened and shocked to hear of the eruption of violence that has wracked the country. I am saddened not only by the rising death toll and numbers of displaced families, which are tragic, but also by the loss of the promise that Kenya held as a model, healthy society.

Photo by Gabriel Kadidi.The situation in the Kibera slum of Nairobi

The Kenyans that I met during my time there told me that they knew that there would be problems with the election. Some of them expected “irregularities” in the vote tallies, some even worried that incidents of violence would occur. Although they were all aware of tribal differences within the country, no one imagined that such awful strife would erupt. Sadly, I think we must attribute a large portion of the blame to people in positions of power who are manipulating the public in their struggle for even greater riches. Do not blame the peasants who are both committing acts of violence and suffering from them; they are merely pawns to the political elite who have held power in Kenya for years. This election and the engineered unrest that followed are all about a chess game played by the upper class to increase their piece of the pie. I don’t blame the poor, the ones who are suffering most in this situation, for being “racist”, “tribal” or inherently violent. Rather, I am disheartened that the most vulnerable have been taken advantage of.

Upon hearing the news of the unrest, and subsequently following the story as best I can through the media, my heart was gripped by the desire to help. I am thinking not only of the many good people that I worked with, sang and laughed with and said goodbye to in Nairobi, but all the Kenyans out there who looked forward proudly to a brighter future. For a while I felt there was nothing I could do. A story came on NPR about donating phone credit to people who have been displaced in these clashes, but the website mentioned didn’t work for me. Then I discovered that Jamii Bora, the microfinance institution with which I worked in Kenya, has set up an emergency fund to provide help to those affected by the unrest.

Jamii Bora, which works to create “better families” as it’s name suggests, is continuing to work with the poorest Kenyans to help improve their lives. The members of Jamii Bora live in the slums and the rural areas of Kenya and, with access to microcredit and health services provided by Jamii Bora, they had been climbing their own way out of poverty. In light of the tremendous setbacks that they are now facing, Jamii Bora started this fund to begin to help people get back on their feet and to survive these dark days. They are using the money to rebuild their looted offices and to help their members open up their businesses again and return to their homes. The donations will be handled through Unitus, a “global microfinance accelerator” and Jamii Bora partner based in Seattle, Washington.

Click here to donate to Jamii Bora’s Emergency Fund.

Below is a message from Ingrid Munro, Managing Trustee of Jamii Bora, highlighting the seriousness of the situation and asking for assistance.

Dear friends,

We have been able to be in touch with most of our branch staff in various parts of the country. The situation is very serious in many parts of the country. The target for most mob actions are the Kikuyu, the country’s largest tribe. But even families of other ethnic background are victims when the looting goes out of hand and nobody has time to check who is a Kikuyu and who is not.

Jamii Bora members are particularly badly hit, first because they are in the poorest areas that are most badly affected, second because in these areas they are often the most successful business people after many years of climbing with Jamii Bora, third because many are Kikuyus in the central urban areas, fourth because the police protection is not so strong in the poorest sections of the cities and town. The areas of the rich are much better protected and hardly attacked at all.

Terrible things are happening. People are killed and injured. Rape is on the rise. A church where many families with children had sought refuge was burnt down by an angry mob in Eldoret and many people including at least 34 children were killed. Poor people’s businesses are destroyed, burnt and/or looted. Homes and even churches are burnt down. The fruits of their hard work to climb out of poverty has been destroyed and burnt to the ground.

Tense calm has returned to a few places but most of the badly hit areas are still experiencing problems. Many families are running away in panic and have lost everything they have worked so hard for.

Some of the worst hit areas are the large slums in Nairobi especially Kibera, Mathare, Huruma- Korogocho, Kangemi and Kawangware. Other towns that have been exposed to serious destruction are Eldoret, Kisumu, Kericho and Mombasa. Many other parts of the country are experiencing serious problems in poorer sections of the towns. Several of our branches have also been looted and our computers and POS machines stolen. People can not run their businesses for risk of looting, thus even those who have not been looted or burnt down are affected. No buses are available since the owners fear that they may be stoned or vandalized. People are starving because they cannot access food, they are homeless and seek refuge at police stations and churches. Thus everyone is affected.

Jamii Bora estimates that almost 50% of the members are affected in at least one of the above mentioned ways. Our own disaster fund will not last long in this situation and we urgently need help.

Anything you can do to assist and contribute in a big or a small way will be highly appreciated.

Warm regards

Ingrid

If you can help, please click here to make a contribution through the Unitus website.

I thank you in advance and ask that you not give up hope for the good people of Kenya.
Me and a cobbler in the Mathare slum
-Trenton

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The lost weekend

November 19, 2007 //

So, I’ve been dishonestly backdating some of my previous posts. I just thought it would make sense for you, dear reader. The continuity of these posts which I write and then sometimes never get around to posting needed to be considered.

To catch you up, there’s a weekend that I haven’t talked about yet. That’s the last weekend of October. I was spending a lot of time with these two Swedish journalists who were here to do a story on Jamii Bora. They are two young guys who have done a few stories in some pretty interesting places as a writer/photographer team.

I went with them out to see a Jamii Bora’s branch in the coffee-growing area of Kiambu. We we taken around by the young branch manager, Ms. Alice Gathua. We drove out there in a taxi that took us down these dirt roads that, I think, delineate the different plantations. The taxi ran out of gas on the way back and the driver hitched a ride to go get some more, came back with a jerrycan and proceeded to use a creased shilling note as an impromptu funnel.  We ate bananas while we waited, bought from a local woman sitting at the crossroads under an umbrella.

It was really interesting to finally see coffee plants growing in their natural state. Some of the coffee cherries were red and some were already black and dried, on the same plant. Each type of cherry provides a different grade of coffee. They are all picked by hand.

Of course what really opened my eyes were the conditions that the workers live in. These are the Jamii Bora members, so we got to spend a good bit of time talking to them. They come from all over Kenya to work on these plantations. Many of them have families in distant provinces that they’ve been supporting for years. In fact, one borrower gave his loan to his wife who is using it in their home province in Western Kenya.
The workers live in buildings that the plantation owners provide. The buildings are nicer in some cases than those in the slums, but some were quite dilapidated. They are small, with no running water, sometimes no electricity and they can house a single worker or a whole family. Fortunately, most of the people we talked to had a small garden plot that they could plant for themselves. Living out in the countryside has a small advantage, therefore, over urban life, but it’s still hard.

The coffee plantation system is very complex, but at its base it revolves around the workers. There are seasonal surges when the fields will be crawling with hired hands and then down time when there’s almost nothing to do. We met a few workers from a neighboring plantation that were planting their own vegetables in between the rows of coffee plants. It turned out that the owner of that plantation had run out of money keep his operation going. So, the workers were just making the most of the long wait until a new owner took charge.

The coffee is all mono-cropped. There is no such thing as shade-grown in this region. I’m not sure if it exists in Kenya, though I’d like to hope so. Our branch manager guide, whose family owns a few coffee-growing plots, had never even heard of “fair trade.” Hopefully it is an idea that will grow in popularity. I’ve suggested to Jamii Bora that they start a cooperative for coffee growers and obtain fair trade certification.

Maybe the Jamii Java House is next?

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A Warm Kenyan Welcome

September 27, 2007 //

Yesterday was my first day in Kenya-
I arrived early in the morning on a Virgin Atlantic flight that was notable only for the stringent, repeated seatbelt checks.

Dalia remarked that Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta is much bigger than the airport in Lome, Togo. Go figure.
After picking up my bag, I stepped out to the waiting crowds and easily spotted Susan wearing her Jamii Bora t-shirt. Jamii Bora is the name of the microfinance institution that I am volunteering for. It means “good families” in Swahili. We took off towards her house in the taxi of Alex, a Jamii Bora member. The cool of the morning was being burned away by the sun as we negotiated the road. I had just read that arriving into Mombassa and leaving the airport was quite a culture shock. Arriving in Nairobi is not. There were large numbers of people walking up and down the streets, on their way to work in the industrial area. Matatus, buses, cars and motorcycles all jockeyed for position while avoiding crossing pedestrians. Other than that, though, it was nothing too extraordinary. We ran into traffic, which is infamous in Nairobi. Every car ride I’ve taken so far has turned excruciatingly long because of traffic jams.

Susan and I exchanged small talk about my flight, my country, my motives for coming out and the operations of Jamii Bora.

We finally arrived to her apartment in the Emily Flats complex. It is somewhat west and south of the city’s center. She had warned me that she lives a middle-class life and that her apartment therefore wasn’t much to brag about. However, I have a large room with a bathroom all to myself and the whole apartment seems like the sort of thing that I’ve seen plenty of in Spain. The apartment I shared with friends on summer in Tarifa is comparable (although there’s no pristine beach five minutes away from here).

A nice breakfast was laid out on the table for me. It included both the very British Weetabix and the very American peanut butter and jelly. (Peanut butter not entirely American, you say? It was Skippy.) They are spoiling me with food, I think.

I was more tired than I thought due to the aforementioned seatbelt checks. Susan suggested that I rest a bit and I followed her advice.
I took a shower (well, the shower’s busted actually. so, it was more like pouring water from a basin over myself. Very hot water, though.) and slept for two hours.

We ate some lunch and went over to the Jamii Bora headquarters. It is a large building in the industrail area that they have recently acquired and set up as the main office. It is bright white and spacious inside. In another place it could be a hip loft space.

I was greeted with singing by the staff members (and members) of Jamii Bora. They lead me up to the conference room for a briefing. After a short introduction, I heard the stories of staff members and the clients.

I have to say that the stories that the clients tell about their lives are so heart-wrenching and beautiful. They have faced innumerable hardships – mafias, fires, HIV/AIDS, tribal conflict – and yet they all end by saying that God is Good because now they are happy, now they look towards the future with hope.

I will be writing up a lot of information that they want to be on their website, so perhaps you will be able to read these stories there. If not, here is a link to a video of Ingrid Munro (the boss around here) presenting these same stories at the Global Microcredit Summit in Halifax. I met Wilson, Beatrice, Clarice and Shosho; they are all mentioned in that presentation.

I also met the heads of several different divisions within Jamii Bora. As a microfinance organization, what makes them so unique is that they treat the problem of poverty holistically. And they get the job done. They started giving out loans until they realized that many members were not paying back those loans because they were getting ill. So, they started a microinsurance scheme that now has hospitals coming to them asking to be their partners. They could see that there were problems with drug and alcohol addiction so they started a counseling division. Knowing firsthand that the slums where the bulk of their clients live are pathetic and inexcusably bad, they started building their own town.

The last I had heard of this town, from the presentation in Halifax, was that it had been stalled by complaints from landowners in the area. However, I was thrilled to find out that all the legal battles had been won by Jamii Bora and construction was nearing completion on the first batch of homes. This town sounds amazing; it will have garbage and recycling services, a wetlands to treat greywater and every home comes with multiple rooms and a flush toilet. In a country that I have found has incredily high property prices, these homes are very affordably-priced. I’ll add more details when I see it for myself.

I didn’t have my camera with me, but I promise I’ll post some illustrative pictures soon. Until then, let me end by saying that I am very happy with my decision to come here to Kenya and to work with Jamii Bora. They have welcomed me with open arms and I think I am going to get a lot out of helping this ‘family’ grow.

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