Dien Bien Phu: Updates

We have been working in Vietnam for more than 1.5 years and we have been providing loans to women in Dien Bien province for almost 8 months. Our program in Dien Bien province, 'the Chi Em Project' has an outreach of more 500 clients as of April 2008. We are working in 41 villages in 3 communes in Dien Bien District, serving ethnic minority women through the Women's Union.

We are well on our way to exceed our loan portfolio projections and performance. However, it is not these numbers that count. We are trying to focus on the impact that our small loans have on our clients and their families. As of now, it is still quite hard to measure and evalute how beneficial these loans have really been for our families. We have implemented a poverty assessment tool to measure several poverty indicators over time among our clients - but this should only be revealing after several loan cycles in 1 - 2 years time. In order to improve our community developmenta and training services for our clients, we have hired a new Agricultural Officer from Hanoi Agricultural University to help us launch our small scale farming and debt alleviation program and to develop our skills training programs.

As of April, we had 50 Women's Union staff and 4 external staff exluding Nathalie and myself. In June, we will hire a Program Officer in Dien Bien, a Program Officer in Hanoi and an Accountant in Dien Bien. Our team is stong and committed...