World Vision is a world wide non profit that focuses on Children and communities in poverty. They will go into a poor community and build schools connect children with sponsers, which will pay for things like their school fees, school uniforms, and relief items. This program is very successful for the 5-15 years that WV is in the community. But overtime, WV has realized that after they pull out of the community, it quickly deteriorates and that program alone is not sustainable. In order to combat this problem, they introduced the microfinance arm of WV for the mothers (and some fathers) in the ommunity. The idea is that they would build up their businesses with the loans provided by WV, and when WV pulled out, they would be able to continue to support their children and their community.
One glitch to this solution is that the woman saw thier child getting all these free handouts from WV and didn't understand why they had to pay back their loan from the same organization. In response to that, WV renamed their microfinance sector in each country they worked in. In Ghana, it is called APED (Association of Progressive Entrepeneurs in Development). When APED goes into WV communities, they tell them that they work in conjunction with WV to form village banking groups. APED opperates
throughout Ghana, not just in WV communities.
During a two week period, I spent time at the APED headquarters, a branch that covered all of the Greater Accra region, and I was able to visit multiple sites in the feild. This was exactly the experience I was looking for and they really went out of their way to make it happen. I was able to sit down and interview operation and client services managers at headquarters, a branch manager, a senior credit officer, a financial officer, and many clients throughout the Greater Accra region. I went into this having a fairly in depth knowledge of microfinance but this experience allowed me to greatly broaden my perspective. My favorite part was meeting the clients and hearing personal anecdotes and success stories. Learning about the struggles of the organization and the clients was also really interesting.
I took a ton of notes during my experience with APED and nothing came as a huge surprise...it was mostly getting into the fine details of how they operate. Something I found very interesting is that they now require clients to have a savings account before they take a loan (ranging from 20%-30% of the loan amount) and they must deposit a certain amount into the account throughout the repayment period. APED also started a pilot program which required clients to get funeral insurance. Funerals are HUGE in Ghana and APED had issues with clients blowing their entire loan on a family member's funeral, which obviously is not a profitable investment.
We didn't have to go far out of Accra to see some incredibly rural villages, complete with mud huts and thatched roofs. Most of the time I was the only white person for miles and that in itself was a strange experience. It was more strange
for everyone else than it was for me. Throughout my entire trip, I have been going to places that most tourists don't go and I get interesting reactions. In one of the WV communities, the entire school of children came out of their classrooms to stare
at me. When I smiled and waved, they got really excited. It is very common for me to walk down a street and here them yell "white person" in several different local languages. Or they will just look at you and say "white" in english and it's in no way meant to be offensive. In some of Lauren's research areas, where we spent a bit of time with the families, some of the young children were very afraid of us because they hadn't seen white people before. They would cry and the parents thought it was hilarious. Some were able to warm up to us in a short period of time.
I have been here 3 weeks and I am very pleased with how I have spent my time. My last week will be spent traveling throughout Ghana and to Togo so I probably won't be able to blog as much. I'll try to keep it updated a bit though. Hopefully some
of you out there are enjoying it. :)
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