Visit of the new FSD Coordinator

Today the Chorkor branch received the visit of the new FSD Coordinator, Miss Elise Ponson. As some of you may remember, the FSD (Fund for Social Development) is a fund managed by the French Embassy which aims at bringing a direct support to local NGOs.
In our case, we are receiving this support for the second time, for the development of our 0% interest loan aiming at the most deprived micro entrepreneurs that we call "Kick Start loans".
Elise came on field to discover our methodology and she met with the Mokosane group, made of 13 Kick Start loanees. 2 of them got their loan in June, the rest in July. The average amount they got is GH¢ 44, which they all used in their business, like Rosemary Mensah (see photos below) who purchased Nigerian soap with it, which she sells in her community. In addition, most of the group is now saving GH¢ 1 to GH¢ 2 per week, while before they joined ID-Ghana almost none of them was saving. This kind of behavioural change is made possible thanks to the training the Social Mission team (in this case the Kick Start loan project manager, Godknows Kporha). He gives such trainings on a weekly basis to our Kick Start partners. After all, one could say that the Kick Start loans project is more of a financial education programme than a financial scheme. For rather sooner than later, our ambition is to see these special product beneficiaries be empowered enough to be able to manage a loan on their own, and access greater capital through our "standard" products...

Kick start loans started at ID-Ghana!

The Kick Start loan project, funded by the French Embassy in Accra, has started on field with the first batch of disbursements at the branch of Chorkor.
After receiving their third training, the 9 selected women were given between GH¢ 40 and GH¢ 50 each. These micro entrepreneurs will pay no fees or interest for these very small loans (for amounts so small, we can talk of nano-loans). They are mostly fuits and vegetable vendors and the aim is to upgrade them in two or three loan cycles at a level of activity that enables them to take a more standard loan through our Onipa Nua groups.
This project is not driven by the financial team but by the social mission team, as a lot of emphasis is put on training and monitoring of micro entrepreneurs (or should I rather say nano entrepreneurs...?)
contrary to our other loan products Onipa Nua, this product is an individual one and is offered only to women. However, Kick Start loan partners are encouraged to join a group as early as possible to facilitate their integration later and they are equally encouraged to save each and every week, even a minimum amount.

AFD donates computers to ID-Ghana

The French Agency for Development AFD has donated today to ID-Ghana ten computers to enable us provide better quality services to our partners in the branches. These computers will be mostly used on field, equipped with our loans and savings tracking system (called Loan Performer) as shown on the picture below taken in our Chorkor branch.

The Success Story of February in Ghana

Mary Brown is a Ga from Chorkor in the Greater Accra Region. She is in her 40s and has been divorced for four years after twenty-five years of marriage. She has three children - one boy and two girls. They are Larte Lartey, 12 years old and in class 6, Larkor Lartey, 9 years old and in class 5, and Larkaly Lartey, 6 years old and in class 2. According to her, the first two children live with their paternal grandfather.
Mary was in Hair Dyeing business when she joined ID-Ghana. She was among the first partners to receive a loan when Chorkor branch was opened in 2002 (see our article of July 2003). She has since received not less than seven loans. Her first loan was GH¢15.00 and her current one is GH¢150.00.
Mary’s working capital back in 2002 was about GH¢50.00 but it has now grown to about GH¢200.00 today. According to her, with the help of the loans and business trainings she has been receiving from ID-Ghana, she was able to divert from hair dyeing into turkey tail business (a delicacy in Ghana!) and further on into fruit business only four months ago. Her savings position in ID-Ghana is currently GH¢185.00.
The loan has helped her in the following ways:
- She has been able to complete the chamber-and-hall apartment where she lives with her last born.
- She has been able furnish her room with items like television, furniture, etc.
- She also bought a fridge during the turkey tail business for freezing the meat
- She is also able to support her child’s education.
Her future business plans are to save a lot of money to expand her fruits business for her to have variety of fruits to satisfy the customers and to save enough money to support her children.
She is keen to say that ID-Ghana’s loans and trainings have helped her to diversify her business twice without any problem. Through the trainings, she has been able to run her business without any difficulty. Now she has recognized and appreciates the importance of savings as well as how to cost her products before selling.
For Mary, ID-Ghana has gained a lot of importance in her life throughout 7 years of support…

The Success Story of June in Ghana

Gladys Teye is a married with three children. Her first born who is twenty years is in the Post Secondary school, the second fifteen years is in the Senior Secondary school and the last is in the nursery. Gladys comes from Akosombo, a city of Eastern Region renowned for its dam across the Volta River. Her parents migrated to Accra when she was a child and since then she has stayed in this city. When she got married, she joined her husband – a tro-tro* driver – in their present house of Chorkor, some twenty years ago.
Gladys has been selling food throughout her life. She first started proposing cooked beans and then rice by the road side at Dansoman (where ID-Ghana has another branch) and soon added banku* to her menu.
Through her food selling she was able to help her husband to buy a piece of land on which they put up a two room house and a chop bar where she sold cooked rice, banku* and beans, now from a fixed place. At this point she wanted to include other food but she didn’t have the finance to do so. As she kept wondering where she was going to get money to borrow, a customer of hers came to eat at her chop bar and mentioned ID-Ghana to her. Even though the first loan of GH¢ 80/- she was given in September 2005 wasn’t as much as she expected, it did help her a lot. She was able to include fufu*, kokonte* and omotuo* to the menu. Her second, third, fourth and fifth loan respectively amounted to 160, 200, another 200 and finally, last January, GH¢ 350/- (see green points on the graph). At the same time, she truly feels she has been able to understand the use of savings and since her involvement with ID-Ghana, always made it a point to save regularly (see graph, in yellow).
These loans allowed her to make significant changes in her business, the glass counter for serving and the television set for her clients being two such examples.
As at now her business is doing so well, in a week, the turnover can reach GH¢ 1,500 to GH¢ 1,800/-. Before taking loan from ID-Ghana, she used to make about GH¢ 720/- a week. Enough to finance a four bed room house… Moreover, the size of the business increasing, she also increased the size of her staffs from 6 to… 10!!
Regarding the training she received from ID-Ghana, she now knows how to manage her business well, how to determine her profit and what amount to save. Through the trainings, she is able to spend her finances wisely and she is very grateful about that. The social training has also gone a long way to help improve her human skills.
Her plans for the future are to raise her chop bar to a higher standard by cementing the whole compound to make her cooking place cleaner (see picture), and also completing her four bedroom house.
(*) Tro-tro is a vehicle – most often a minivan – that carries passengers along a pre-defined track across the city. It is by far the most common mean of public trans-portation in Accra.
Banku: Fermented corn/cassava dough mixed proportionally and cooked in hot water into a smooth whitish consistent paste.
Fufu: boiled cassava, yam, plantain or rice, pounded into a glutinous mass, usually in a giant, wooden mortar and pestle.
Kokonte is similar to fufu in result but prepared like banku.
Omotuo: similar dish as banku but prepared with rice.

Visit of EdM

Frank Renaudin, the Director of Entrepreneurs du Monde and Laëtitia Raginel, the Coordinator of EdM for West-Africa (based in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso) came to Accra for 5 days to get the pulse of the Ghanaian programme.
Their visit was an occasion for Frank to appreciate the progress made by the programme since his last visit in October 2007 while for Laëtitia, it was more of an opportunity to get the grip of her contact with ID-Ghana, her mission being the first to Ghana since her holding of office last November. It was the first time for me as well to receive Frank and Laëtitia on the programme after the visit of the financial staff from Poitier.(Hélène Keraudren & Fathi Nouira) last February, as I was just landing.
Most of our time was spent on field (see photo on top left Frank and Laëtitia in Nima area). We thus visited the branches in Nima-New Town, Madina, Chorkor, Glefe & Agbogbloshie, that is to say 5 out of ID-Ghana’s 7 branches. These visits were not only an opportunity to meet the beneficiaries but also an occasion to interact with staffs of the various branches (like on the right in Madina and in Chorkor). The replication of ASA methodology was the dominant topic as the success if this project is critical to ID-Ghana’s long term success. These discussions were fuelled by the field visit in Madina, where this methodology was implemented in March & in Glefe where the pilot project ASA started in January 2007. In both these cases the interactions with the groups of beneficiaries turned out to be particularly interesting & enriching.
The social mission was equally the centre of the discussions as we attended different sessions of training in Glefe & Chorkor (see photo down left & right). In Glefe itself, some 311 beneficiaries received two trainings each this month (one related to social issues and one related to management of micro businesses). These trainings are carried out by two Trainings Officers who share the work over the7 branches of ID-Ghana.
The visit was completed on a meeting with the staff of the pilot branch of Glefe with whom we laid the foundations of the operations manual of ASA. This manual, whose first version will be ready by mid-April, will incorporate the fruits of more than one year testing and fine-tuning of the Bangladeshi NGO “ASA” methodology in a Ghanaian context. This methodology was initially developed in the 1990’s.

Translated by Promina Tevels

Article on ID-Ghana in the Daily Graphic

An article was published in the Daily Graphic, one of the prominent Ghanaian daily newspaper, on the occasion of the one year of the Chorkor branch. You can download and read the article by clicking here.

To know more about the Daily Graphic, read its Wikipedia article.