BigThink

Posted by Kaitlin Walter, Fellow

Gurrion Mabunda and Veltah Mathebula will be receiving the Project’s first two microloans this week! Gurrion is starting his business, the Utah Egg Farm, and Veltah is re-establishing her business, the Chicken Project. They will both meet with a SEDA business adviser on 1 February to go over their business plans with her, and to do more intensive financial planning in terms of the loan amount they will be receiving (R5000). In becoming clients of SEDA, these two businesses will have a much better chance of succeeding and repaying the loan money to the Project because of SEDA’s resources and experience in starting small enterprises in rural areas. The Center Committee has decided to give them a grace period of one week before they will start checking the businesses records to ensure that stock is being bought, bookkeeping is happening, marketing research is occurring, etc., and they will give them a one- month grace period before the first installment  payment is due. The Center Commitee designed the system so that the Recipients deposit repayment money into the Project Account on their own schedules and then bring deposit slips to the monthly Center Meetings in order to show that the total installment has been paid.

I will be visiting the businesses with different Committee members over the next three weeks to observe the Recipients’ progress and to monitor the Center Committee’s monitoring process. I can’t believe that my time in South Africa is so quickly coming to an end, but I know that I will be busy right up until the very last minute!