ThinkImpact would like to welcome our guest blogger, Fehmeen Khan. to BigThink, to tell us about her experience with microfinance and the work she is doing.

–

There are four choices for those who realize we’re in the middle of a microfinance revolution: oppose it, watch peacefully from the sidelines, occasionally support the idea in accordance with one’s personal capacity, or become an active participant of this noble cause.

I chose the third option.

Microfinance Hub was born the day I made this decision and I haven’t looked back since. The aim was to create awareness about the penetrating social implications and remarkable financial returns of this phenomenon, and a website seemed to be the most effective method of achieving this feat.

I had no exposure to this field prior to late January 2010; in fact, all I knew about it was that Professor Yunus, the ‘father of microfinance’, won the 2006 Noble Peace Prize and that my dad had only just joined a local microfinance bank.

But that was enough to get me started and I soon came across ThinkImpact’s blog, as well as a few other valuable resources that welcomed me into the complex yet fascinating world of microfinance. It did not take me long, however, to realize there was a relative dearth of information about this topic, despite the honest efforts of many well-wishers, and I thought I ought to do my part in filling this gap by shifting the focus of my site.

As a result, over the last couple of months, I’ve covered various areas related to trends, challenges, technology, services and the economic impact of microfinance itself, and in effect promoted other people’s efforts as well as my own.  Many people from around the globe drop by my site each day and show their support in their own way; some leave comments, others subscribe, yet I attribute my greatest pleasure to simply being able to help answer their questions about microfinance.

No wonder my dreams continue to flourish. I know one day, maybe after a couple of years, Microfinance Hub will live up to its name and become a central source of simplified information for anyone interested in microfinance. Now, my aim is simply to educate others about this idea, so somewhere down this road, when the World Bank is forced to eliminate the concept of the poverty line because no one lives a life of economic deprivation, I can look back and be glad that I played a part in this revolution – a small part that was commensurate with my individual capacity.

Name: Fehmeen Khan

Website: Microfinance Hub

URL: http://microfinancehub.com

Gurrion and Veltah, the Project’s microloan Recipients, are both enrolled in SEDA’s pilot Mentoring Programme. They will be mentored by a business adviser from a private company that is contracted by SEDA for two months. They will meet with Themba Manzini, the business adviser, this coming Wednesday to begin their mentoring sessions. The Project Committee will continue to monitor and support their new businesses, the Uta Egg Farm and the Uta Chicken Project, over the entire repayment period, while Themba will help them with the business side of things. I think that the Project’s partnership with SEDA will help to ensure its sustainability in a unique way.

The Project’s Microfinance Program is for the Uta community run by community members, but SEDA’s resources and expertise will help both the Project Recipients and the Project Committee as the Program develops. SEDA has agreed to enroll all future Project microloan Recipients into Mentoring Programmes, and it envisions the Committee ultimately giving them up to five people at a time to mentor in starting small enterprises. The Recipient’s first installment payment is due at the end of March, and because of the popularity of chicken and eggs in Uta, I think that these two businesses will be successful. I will be excited to see what new ideas come up when the Committee accepts applications for its second round of microloans, and I will also be excited to see the evolution of the Project Committee. My dream is that the Project Committee will become a business itself, paying the Committee members salaries to do the hard work that they now do as volunteers. I think that this is a real possibility, and SEDA has already agreed to mentor the Committee in the process of becoming its own business in the future. We will see how this first round goes, but the sky’s the limit!

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!

I’m currently working on a couple of fundraising projects. They are all very exciting, especially the Uta Bakery Team running in the Georgia Half-Marathon on March 29th. There are six girls on the team, and each girl has a personal fundraising goal of $10 per mile. We already have two girls who have donors that have agreed to match their total amount raised, and we can’t wait to run for social entrepreneurship! If you’d like to sponsor a mile or two (or even someone’s entire thirteen!), please donate on the bakery page and help us run for a purpose next month! The project is also consistently raising additional funds each month with the Spare Change for Social Change campaign.

When SMRC members travel to Uta in a couple of weeks, they’ll be getting a lot of important information for the project about its possibilities. The group will assess the Uta bakery as the Buffelshoek Trust established it, and then I’ll be able to keep directing the project in terms of how the money raised will go towards the bakery’s improvement and how it will help perpetuate an entrepreneurial spirit in Uta and the surrounding villages by setting a successful example.

I am trying to learn everything that I can about micro-enterprise and micro-finance right now, in the goal of having a solid enough understanding by June of how a small business is run to make the project as successful as possible. I’m also working at a small bakery here in Atlanta to see first-hand how a small business is effectively run.

What ideas do you have in mind?