New Projects for 2010

In our last post, we mentioned some problems with microfinance today. While difficult issues have arise in the industry, it's still one of the keys to poverty alleviation. In fact, GIVE is already working with MFIs and NGOs in Southeast Asia to combat some of the downsides of the microfinance industry so it can become even more effective at helping the poor and building stronger, more stable communities in the region.

Last month, we opened our first entrepreneurship center in Manila. In partnership with a local NGO, Inner City Development Cooperative (ICDC), we plan to offer education via the Barefoot MBA, an entrepreneurship course aimed at helping the poor start sustainable businesses, including other business training modules that are being developed. Additionally, we hope to integrate other business support services for the local community which we will announce when they become available.

We're working to develop a childcare co-op through the entrepreneurship center, too. Many women cannot utilize their microfinance loans to their utmost capacity because they have children at home and no one else to care for them. This co-op will help meet these childcare needs so the women have the time and energy to start businesses that will not only sustain their families, but also help their local communities.

Successful businesses are run by resilient business owners. Alongside these business-oriented opportunities, we're also pioneering a group-support program to help the recipients of microfinance loans combat learned helplessness. While learning business skills will give these microentrepreneurs the chance to improve their businesses by improving their minds, these group sessions will help them overcome culturally ingrained ideas that defeat them before they even get started.

We have three major MFIs in Cambodia on board with starting a similar entrepreneurship center there. We hope to have the details of this ironed out later this year so we can begin working with those entrepreneurs as soon as possible. This is a great opportunity for us to not only aid entrepreneurs, but to develop scales and metrics that will help us measure GIVE's success and grow an in-house set of tools aimed at giving microentrepreneurs the very best resources for success.

These are only the first of many ventures GIVE has in the works to support MFIs and the microentrepreneurs who receive their loans. Getting money into these communities is an important step, and GIVE plans to help take these loans even further by making them a more effective tool to combat poverty.

Cambodian-Expat Social Entrepreneur Becomes An Advisor

I joined Debbie Watson, a long-time Cambodian expat, microfinance expert and social entrepreneur for a tour of her new venture, FunkyJunk, an innovative social enterprise that makes beautiful and functional products from discarded plastic bags reclaimed from the streets and fields of Cambodia.

Debbie is on a personal mission to tackle the scourge of discarded, non-biodegradable plastic bags that litter the Cambodian landscape, hoping to develop a model that can be expanded throughout SE Asia and other developing countries.

“People in many countries are now very aware of the need to stop using plastic bags in their own country,” she says. “But in poorer nations this is often not the case, and especially not in Cambodia. By purchasing FunkyJunk products, consumers can contribute to a cleaner environment in countries less fortunate than their own, as well as making their home or office look funky too!”

FunkyJunk operates in accordance with fair trade standards and each product is labeled with the number of bags that have been reclaimed. After success in the local marketplace, she’s looking to move into the export market, and is seeking GIVE’s assistance via our Marketers Without Borders program in opening up international markets for FunkyJunk products.

Debbie is currently working with Mercy Corps in Indonesia, consulting on a variety of microfinance projects. Drawing from her extensive knowledge on microfinance and poverty alleviation, Debbie is assisting GIVE in establishing operations in Cambodia, including a new Urban Entrepreneurship Center (UEC) that is slated to come online later this year.

Teaching the Barefoot MBA

GIVE accompanied the first batch of Barefoot MBA trainers as they undertook their first round of trainings in ICDC-assisted communities.

ICDC is integrating business skills training along with their regular microloan activities, which involve going into borrower communities for weekly loan servicing, and have efficiently blended in 15-minute business skills classes.

The Barefoot MBA consists of 16 individual lessons that are being taught weekly based on suggested lesson pairs like Debt and Interest, Cost-Benefit Analysis and Incentives, Saving and Investing, Opportunity Costs and Spending, Price-Quantity and Planning and Records, etc. Each lesson is expressed through stories that illustrate how to apply the Barefoot MBA concepts in their businesses.


20 borrowers took part in the initial lesson. They were interested and engaged throughout the process. ICDC will be conducting the same lessons on a weekly basis in urban poor communities in Quezon City in the coming months, leading to a full, ongoing business skills training throughout ICDC’s entire microcredit operation.

GIVE Launches Urban Entrepreneurship Center in Manila

On March 1st 2010, GIVE officially launched its first Urban Entrepreneurship Center™ (UEC) in Tatalon, Quezon City in partnership with Inner City Development Cooperative, Babyloan and Entrepreneurs Du Monde, a French nonprofit organization (NGO) that focuses on poverty alleviation through microfinance and other socio-economic programs in Asia (Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, India, Burma), Africa (Benin, Ghana, Burkina Faso) and Central America (Haiti). 

The UEC model will serve as a centerpiece of GIVE’s work in Manila and other parts of SE Asia. The center will serve as a community resource that will support to our project partners and their communities through business skills training, computer workshops, technical and vocational training and other nonfinancial services that will assist our NGO and microfinance institution partners in better fulfilling their mission of poverty alleviation. 

As part of the opening ceremonies, Steven Van Yoder spoke to the ICDC staff and trainers, and shared the stage with ICDC founder and director Zeny De Jesus who explained the new programs that will be offered through the entrepreneurship center. Also on hand was local city councilman Atty. Bong Suntay who offered to support ICDC’s programs for small and medium size entrepreneurs. 

GIVE, along with ICDC, is developing new programs that will be offered through its first UEC, including childcare for single, working mothers and microsavings programs. We plan on using the center as a laboratory for new, innovative approaches to poverty alleviation that will ultimately become a transportable model for other countries. 

Entrepreneurship Teachers in Manila Graduate Basic Skills Training

Inner City Development Cooperative (ICDC), our partner in Manila, Philippines, has been busy preparing for the full rollout of the Barefoot MBA entrepreneurship curriculum set in motion in August 2009 in Bacolod, Philippines. They just completed their first internal training of trainers, which consisted of training 16 ICDC staff from each of their four Manila branches to become certified Barefoot MBA teachers.

This is a significant milestone for GIVE’s work in SE Asia. For several years, we’ve searched for an appropriate business skills training model that would assist us in fulfilling a core area of our mission: providing the tools for assisting microentrepreneurs in becoming more successful business owners.

To this end, GIVE is utilizing the Barefoot MBA, an open-source business training module developed by Scott Raymond and Katherine Boas. It’s been 6 months since GIVE organized a training of trainers workshop with Scott, Catherine and our partners from the Philippines and Cambodia.

Despite setbacks endured by ICDC in the aftermath of the tragic typhoon that resulted in severe flooding in Manila in September and October last year, which significantly impacted the communities in which we work, we are happy that our plans are now back on track and moving forward for 2010.

The completion of the ICDC training of trainers was accompanied by a graduation ceremony attended by Steven Van Yoder, founder and director of GIVE. It was rewarding to see the results of so many months of hard work, and the determination of our partners and their communities to carry on after such devastating challenges. But GIVE and our friends at ICDC are ready to put our programs into action!

Needs in the Philippines

ICDC has been able to partner with several local NGOs to provide assistance to families devastated by Typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng (known as Ketsana and Parma in the international community). Currently, the needs for basic necessities outweigh anything else, with families searching for food, clean water, shelter, and clothing.

ICDC is currently accepting donations for 1 week's worth of food for about 10,000 families. In addition, they are facing a great medicine shortage. Because of conditions brought on by the flooding, medication for diarrhea, athlete's foot, colds, hypertension, and fevers are the most essential, followed by a need for vitamins to boost immune resistance to the rampant disease.

To best offer aid for these needs, ICDC is meeting with the Red Cross about a possible 2-week medical mission to the area.

Pollution is also becoming an issue, with garbage piling up, smelling, and providing a place for fungus and disease to grow. For the moment, the best solution available in most locations is to sequester trash and debris as much as possible.

Given the incredibly large number of people affected by this disaster, ICDC does not yet know how long relief efforts are going to be necessary. They are, however, dedicated to offering aid in as many ways as possible until the crisis is over.

Philippines Post-Typhoon Situation Summary

Between September 26, 2009 and October 3, 2009, two typhoons hit the Philippines. The wind and rains have filled many roads waist-deep or higher, making them all but impassable. People have been stranded away from their families for hours or days needed rescue from rooftops and trees, and some even lost their lives.

In some places, the devastation was total. Buildings not destroyed are uninhabitable, and food supplies cut off indefinitely. ICDC and other local NGOs have been working day and night to reach people who need the basic necessities: food, clean water, and dry clothes. The city flooded so quickly in places that people were unable to save anything except the clothes on their backs and their lives, so the need for basic necessities is great.

Many of the families affected were participants in ICDC's microfinance program, and so are some of the micro-entrepreneurs GIVE has been hoping to aid. ICDC is assessing their situations and mustering what aid they can to help.

Needless to say, these disasters put a crimp in GIVE's plans to open the new micro-entrepreneurship center. While those plans are still in the works, ICDC and its affiliates have had to refocus on helping the communities around them survive and thrive in the face of this tragedy. We hope that this will be a short delay and our plans will be back on schedule shortly.