Dien Bien Phu and Hanoi: Positive momentum

Following up on my previous post of 'frustration', I must say that in the past few months, we have won many mini-battles and have a number of little accomplishments to be proud of. I have just been so focused on getting our loans distributed that I have not celebrated every tiny victory...

- We finalized our memorandum of understanding with our microfinance partner in Hanoi, Binh Minh, so that we are supporting the creation of a credit office in Bac Ninh Province (30 minutes from Hanoi.)
- We received an operational permit from PACCOM enabling us to work in Vietnam as a microfinance operator!
- The Director of EDM, Franck, came to Vietnam last month and helped us to improve our approach, generating endless solutions for us in just 5 days! The women in Dien Bien still talk about Mr. Franck who they discovered was not drinking his rice wine at the officials welcoming meeting and who was pouring the rice wine on the floor so he would not get too drunk at 9am in the morning!
- We spent 1 month living in Dien Bien revising our long term vision, determining our loan products and conducting a subsector analsysis with the help of a Vietnamese agricultural expert / volunteer from HAU University (Mr. Khanh) and a business consultant/intern from Stanford Business school (Matt)
- We finalized our budget with the Women's Union and hired 3 women (Yen, Hue and Dung). We have fired Yen twice now from our project but are required to work with her nonetheless. Each time we fire her, we have to hire her again, generally during the same meeting, so we have to laugh and squeeze eachother like we are old friends!
- We analyzed the clients’ basic income generating activities so that could offer more dynamic loan products that were tailored to the clients’ business cycles which would provide more income to our clients. For instance, a client can now access a $30 loan which will allow them to purchase a piglet at 10kg, raise the piglet to 65kg, sell within 4-5 months for a net profit of $90, and reimburse our loan in the 6th month. Offering the flexibility of loan size and loan maturity in addition to business development training is a huge value-add to the market place and it is also a feature that we could not have offered without fully understanding the demands of our clients. So bravo to Khanh, Matt, Nat, Franck and team!
-We have come up with new solutions for Huoi Pung, our version of the forgotten village. The village is indebt by at least 6,000$ to one rice lender at the bottom of the hill, Mr. Bien. Traditional microfinance would not work here. Instead we will forge on and find debt alleviation solutions to give this village a chance at exiting debt and becoming a sustainable community. We are setting up a rice shop in the village where we lend rice loans (as the village uses rice instead of money and are charged 50% rates for reimbursement).
-We have toyed with the idea of moving to Dien Bien and living in a Black Thai Stilt house. Nathalie and I are looking for houses in the rice paddies. We will use this house as our office as well. More to come from our upcoming trip in one weeks time..!