MICROFINANCE TRIP JOURNAL

In April 2008, a select group of Unitus supporters traveled to India to experience microfinance firsthand. After two days with Swadhaar, a Mumbai-based Unitus partner, the group continued to Hyderabad to learn about rural microfinance with another Unitus partner, SKS.  Nina Licht, trip participant and a new supporter of microfinance, shares her experiences visiting SKS clients in the village of Bhongiri.

It’s early and you would think it would be quiet, but to no avail; once we drive off the resort site, it’s bonk bonk, beep beep. Taxis, mopeds, tri-peds—excuse me, wait, what are these things? I’ll call them covered “tri-peds,” acting as taxis, and there are literally thousands of them. Streets crowded, traffic already in motion, street dwellers, business men, women, so many colors, sounds, and smells. It’s too much to concentrate on one sense. We slowly begin to reach some order and are driving where it is quiet again. A big yellow-orange ball starts to rise and cast light on these small towns and villages. There’s a slight haze. Through the mist, in the distance: land, forts on hillsides, temples, ashrams, cows, goats, women and shop owners sweeping debris from their dirt store fronts and homes.

. . . We go into the village. The village is not what I expected.  There are adobe-looking stucco homes, dirt roads, children praying in sync and getting ready for school, women in brilliant saris and no shoes. We are guided to what I call “The Circle of Trust.”

These loan circles had been explained to us previously. Women here in the past were often devalued in their roles as mothers, wives, and daughters. Families were poor and often females were looked at as a burden. How could they get out of this cycle?  They could become bread winners, that’s how. They could become entrepreneurs; they could become debt decreasers; they could pay for their daughters to become educated. A $50-$200 loan can buy goats, cows, bangle bracelets to sell, embroidery materials to sew; that same loan can pay back loans their husbands defaulted on or had at an exorbitant interest rate from a moneylender; that same loan can educate their children.

Five women make up a group. They agree to be in this group together. They also agree if one defaults, the other four will pay the defaultee’s portion. How is this working, you ask? Is an over 95 percent payback rate sufficient proof it works? I think so.  The circle this morning is of ten groups of five; only one woman is missing. They meet once a week. They form a circle and it is led by two SKS employees. There is an order they follow and I cannot exactly remember it, but I know there were payments paid, requests for new loans, commitment pledges recited, laughing, and prideful women feeling empowered. 

Several questions were asked. How many of them had higher education (meaning high school and above)? None. How many of their children were in higher education? Lots of hands, almost all. The loans are changing the prospects for these women, and their children have an opportunity for a different life.

The women asked our group, what do poor woman in your country do? How is it for them? A brilliant Unitus board member answered that we didn’t view them as poor. We viewed them rich in spirit. I agree. Sometimes we think there is so much we have to give, but I took away a simpler lesson: life makes you more rich than any material thing can . . . I can not quite explain, I guess I would use the word “love” to describe what was locked in that circle; love, respect, honesty, truth and hope for themselves, for each other, for their children and between two very different, but very similar cultures.

We went to visit some of the borrowers’ businesses. The first one was a woman who had several kid goats. There were two homes on her property. One was made of straw, sticks, and twine, and the other of the stucco adobe I described earlier. The first structure is where her family used to live, and the other is her current house she can afford thanks to the loan she had received to buy more goats, which meant more business for her. The second business was a meat processing and food grinding business. You have to imagine what that kind of process looked like in our country 100 years ago and then make the comparison. They did not have floors, but it was the cleanest dirt you have ever seen.

. . . We pull into the beep beeps and bonk bonks. My senses are a little out of whack again. We pull into our fairy tale again, and I walk in the hotel a little teary-eyed and guilty. Can I just take half of the luxury, crumble it up, get cash for it and walk right back out the door and give it to the masses living in poverty? For a moment I really think yes I can, but reality hits. I come into acceptance. I must go home, never forget my trip, and think of how I can help when I return home. One person can make a difference for one person and that is a start.

> Learn more about Unitus Microfinance Trips