Kiva Microfinance Loan #11 - Sinore from Kenya

Sinore is from Kenya.  She is 52 years old, married and blessed with 6 children that she supports.  She is a maize farmer and has been in the farming activity for the past 4 years.  She will purchase farm inputs and prepare the lands with this loan.  She intends to use the anticipated profits to reinvest.  Her future dream is to be successful in her venture.

Kiva loan # 10 - Nadupoi

Nadupoi is 62 years old, married and blessed with four children that she supports.  For the last 11 years she has worked in animal trading.  She will use her loan to purchase animals to fatten and re-sell at a profit.  She is a hard-working woman from Kenya and plans to pay for her children's school fees with the increased profits.  She hopes to grow her business into a large-scale venture, as well as improve her family's living standards.

Kiva Loan #9 - Scolasticah

Scolasticah is a widowed woman from Kenya with 5 children.  She operates a poultry business and has been in the business for 5 years.  She plans to use her loan to buy chicks for her business.  She owns her own house but it has no electricity or piped water. 

Our Latest Kiva Microfinance Loans

Keziah is from Kenya and she is 35 years old.  She is married to Peter and together they have four children.  She is a farmer and has been in the business for the past 15 years.  She will use the loan amount to purchase fertilizer and seedlings to use during this planting season.  She will use thee anticipated profits to pay school fees for her children.

She hopes to be among the leading farmers in her area  and also improve her living standards.

Leah is a married lady, 55 years old from Kenya, blessed with five children aged between 30 and 22 years.  She practices horticulture in her farm and has been in operation for a period of ten years.

This is her second loan cycle.  She repaid the previous loan successfully.  She wishes to use the new loan to purchase passion fruit seedlings and to prepare the land.

Leah will use her profits to help her children and expand her passion fruit farm.  She hopes to live a better life and prosper in her farm.

Mutaraza Kwebisaho Group from Uganda - Jovailo is a 49-year-old divorcee with four children. Since she divorced her husband who later died, Jovailo needs income to boost her business in order to help her look after her children so that they can have a better future. She conducts business on a small scale. Her main challenges are price fluctuations, unpredictable seasons and dishonest clients who buy goods on credit and never pay.

Evas, another group member, wants to buy more goats to trade as well as beans, maize, nuts and bananas. Her husband is unemployed, so she is the one looking after the family. Price fluctuations and foot-and-mouth disease are her major challenges.

The women are grateful to Ugafode and the group for having helped them to be independent in terms of finance. They are now doing well, and their children and families are well cared for thanks to sensitization received through the group.

Nafi's Group from Senegal - The Banc Villageois (Village Lending Group) that houses this group was founded on September 28, 2012. It is made up of 27 women from the same area who work mainly in sales, agriculture and livestock fattening.

The featured borrower Madame Nafi is a 44 year old married woman. She is the mother of eight children, the youngest of whom is eight. She also has a granddaughter who is three years old. She is the house mother at the outpost health clinic in the village and she has several years of experience. She practices sheep fattening concurrently. Standing up at the right of the photo, she is dressed in white and yellow flowers and is raising her left hand. 

With her loan, Nafi counts on buying two sheep for fattening and hopes to resell them four or five months later to prepare for her repayment.

She participates in the family spending (school fees, clothing, food, health) to support her husband.

Oh What A Night!!!!

The Year of the Farmer Ball in the Hall was a HUGE success!!!  There were 140 people there to enjoy the night - we ate, drank, laughed and danced our night away!!  We raised almost $3000 which we distributed amongst our Kiva committments, Birthing Kits Australia, the local school, and the Hall to upgrade the kitchen.  Everyone was too busy enjoying themselves to take any photos of the night!  I've only got these ones taken before the guests arrived.  In 2 years we'll be doing it all again!!

The Hall has NEVER looked this good!!

Some of the items we auctioned off and gave away as lucky door prizes.

Our unique bar tables with a bit of schushing!!

The entry to the Hall is always fun to decorate.

A board of photos taken around our district.

Our very talented Liz painted 4 chooks for the auction - they proved very popular!

Preparing for Ball in the Hall

Our fundraising "Year of the Farmer - Ball in the Hall" is this Friday night, so this week our group has been busy preparing the Hall to looks fabulous!  

 First there was 60 tissue paper pompoms to fluff!

Then we had to decide how to decorate the Hall using whatever we could find around our farms - metal chooks and barbed wire balls.

We have about 130 people coming for the night!

There were windmills, old boots and camp ovens!

Hanging the barbed wire and fairy light "chandelier" that Jo made which will be used on the night then auctioned off to raise money for our Kiva programme, Birthing Kits Australia and the Hall to build a new kitchen!

A couple of brave souls volunteered to man the scaffold to hang the chandelier and pompoms!

Another update after the next working bee at the Hall on Thursday - then it's all systems GO for a fantastic night of celebrating being a farmer!!!

"Ball in the Hall" Progress

It's less than 2 months until our Ball and we are progressing well with our plans.  We have booked a fantastic local caterer (and she's a farmers wife!), the entertainment is a local husband and wife team who will sing anything from the 60's to now to suit everyone, and the local footy/netball club are manning the bar for us!

Our hall was in need of a major makeover, so the committee got together and organised for it to be completely painted inside.  So it's now all nice and clean with cream walls instead of purple and blue?!!  I know, what were they thinking - purple and blue!!

Our next dilemma is how to spruce up the hall to make it look special for the evening.  We've had a lot of suggestions from our group, so we're confident it will look fantastic on the night.  We decided on very colourful decorations and they have all been handmade, so we've not had to spend a lot of money to make the Hall look fabulous.

We have a number of handmade items to auction off on the night to make it a more personal event.  Any profits will go towards the Kiva programme our group supports, and some other local groups we'd like to help depending on how much money is left over after the dust settles!

Applique banner for the front entry of the Hall

Quilt finished ready to be auctioned for charity

Close-up of quilt detail

Handmade decorations ready to go - preserving jars with candles, punched tin cans with candles, button flowers for the tables, and fabric bunting for the stage

60 tissue paper pom poms to be fluffed and hung, and colourful serviettes to brighten the tables

Advertising posters ready to distribute

Kiva Microfinance Loan #4 - Rose

Rose is a farmer in Eldoret where she resides in her rural home with her husband and two children aged 7 and 1 year old. She has been in farming for twelve successive years with her major produce being maize, milk, eggs and vegetables. She runs a cereals retail business besides farming.

Rose has requested a loan of $750 to buy and insure a dairy. She plans to buy more land to enable her to plant at least ten acres of maize every planting season to boost her cereals business. She currently sources some cereals from local middlemen who charge exorbitant prices.

She laments of the high costs of inputs, especially during dry seasons, and unstable prices for farm produce in the local markets.

Kiva Update

Faith, the tea-growing farmer from Kenya has repaid the loan we contributed to in May.  The loan was not due to be re-paid for 12 months so this is a real bonus for our group because we can now re-lend that money to another female farmer in need from Africa.

Birthing Kit Foundation (Australia)

The Birthing Kit Foundation (Australia) is an organisation dedicated to improving the conditions for women who give birth at home in developing countries such as Afghanistan, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Malawi, India, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Sudan, Uganda and Tibet.

"Every 90 seconds, a woman dies of complications related to pregnancy and childbirth"

With an estimated 385,000 women dying annually in childbirth, many from infections acquired during childbirth, there is a great need for our clean birthing kits.

Most women we assist for reasons of isolation, cultural choice or poor transport have little or no assistance during childbirth. Many mothers and babies die from preventable infections. By providing a clean birthing kit and training in how to use it, these mothers will have the resources to reduce infection.

The Foundation is a not-for-profit non-government organisation (NGO) that provides birthing kits and education in clean birthing practices. We have no religious or political affiliations. 

The birthing kit addresses the 7 cleans needed for a safe delivery - clean birth site, clean hands, clean ties, clean cut, clean eyes, clean umbilical and clean perineum.

The kits are basic with 6 items - a plastic sheet, soap, 2 gloves, sterile scalpel blade, 3 cords and 5 gauze squares.  These items are assembled into a small bag at an Assembly Day.

When our group read the statistic that "every 90 seconds, a woman dies of complications related to pregnancy and childbirth", we decided to donate some money for supplies for these very important kits.

Kiva Microfinance Loan # 3 - Faith

Faith is a married woman from Kenya. She has 2 children, ages 7 and 8. She describes herself to be social and talkative. She operates a farm where she grows tea. She has been involved in this business for 2 years and employs 3 staff members. Her business is located at a busy local area and her primary customers are a cooperative tea firm.

In addition, she runs a grocery store where she sells fruit. She describes her biggest business challenge to be changes of climate greatly affecting tea.

She will use the loan to pay for hiring a farm for growing tea for selling. Her business goal is to buy land within 5 years. She hopes that in the future, she will build a house and venture into another business of a boutique.

Kiva Microfinance Loan # 2 - Millicent

After our first Kiva loan was successfully repaid on time, our group decided to re-loan the money to another worthy woman in agriculture.  We chose Millicent who is the facilitator of the Bongoline B group of the One Acre Fund in Western Kenya.

Millicent takes care of five children at home. She joined One Acre Fund in order to access fertilizer and hybrid seeds and ensure food security for her family. In the 2011 season, Millicent had a very good maize yield, harvesting 16 bags on 1 acre of land. Before joining One Acre Fund, Millicent was only able to harvest 8 bags of maize on 1 acre of land.

With this loan, One Acre Fund will purchase fertilizer, seeds, and other important inputs to distribute to Millicent and her group during Kenya’s next planting season in February 2012. The distribution of farming inputs is part of One Acre Fund’s integrated agriculture package, which includes training, reliable input supply (such as fertilizer and seeds), credit and insurance.

With income from maize sales, Millicent will educate her children and invest in livestock rearing.

In 2012, the members of Bongoline B group will each plant between ½ and 1 acre of maize.

We received an update from Kiva last week which told us that Millicent has successfully planted her maize crop on time, and all looks good for a profitable crop.  The loan is to be fully re-paid by December 2012.

Year of the Farmer "Ball in the Hall"

Due to 2012 being the Year of the Farmer, our group has decided to hold an event that Marrar and district has not seen in a very long time - a full on glitz and glamour old-fashioned "ball".  It was decided that it was time for our group to get dressed up to the nines and have a fantastic night out in our little country hall.

The ball will  be happening at the end of October and we'll be having a scrumptious 3 course meal by a wonderful local caterer.  We've got a husband and wife duo lined up for entertainment, and we'll have some fantastic prizes for a raffle and even some items that have been handmade by a few of our members to be auctioned off.  All funds raised will go to charity - we haven't decided which charity but our Kiva microfinance loan programme might be the one to benefit

We can't wait to finalise all the details and get some advertising happening to make it a wonderful night to remember!  We'll keep you posted!

The idea for our night came from this event - Opulence in the Outback.  Check out their website and see how much money they raised from their event - unbelievable!  As their website says -

"Opulence in the Outback is our way of thanking our local producers and helping to lift the profile of farmers in our region - not to mention offering the perfect setting for our farmers to enjoy a well earned evening of opulence and entertainment surrounded by their peers and supporters.

In 2012, we celebrate the Australian Year of the Farmer. It recognizes what farmers do for all Australians. It's about what we eat; about fresh fruit and vegetables, dairy, grains, fish, meat, eggs and about wool, cotton, timber - all the fine quality products that our farmers grow and harvest in large and small businesses.

In our region, farming and agriculture is synonymous with our way of life. Most of us are either farmers ourselves, come from a farming background or serve the agricultural industry in one way or another. The Year of the Farmer, gives us the perfect opportunity to show our respect and acknowledge the important impact our local farmers have on our community, region, state, nation and even the world."

Positive Update on our Microfinance Loan

We received an email update this week from Kiva about our microfinance loan we made to Rosine from Rwanda for her fruit and vegetable business. She has made her first loan repayment to us on time! She has 3 monthly repayments to go until she has repaid the entire amount. So by December Rosine will be debt free. She must be a very good businesswoman to have made her repayments on time. As soon as we have received all our loan amount back we will search for another worthy lady to help.

Update - Rosine repaid her loan to our group on time, so now we can re-loan that money to another worthy lady involved in agriculture!

Kiva Microfinance Loan # 1 - Rosine

Towards the end of 2010 Marrar Ag n Chat decided that we wanted to become involved in microfinance loans for women in poverty stricken countries to help them either start or continue their own business to support their family. Today we finally made a decision on who to help and through which agency. We chose to donate through Kiva which is a well-established organisation based in the USA.

The photo above is of Rosine from Rwanda who we chose as our recipient. She is a 35-year-old entrepreneur that is married with two children, ages 3 and 6. Her husband is a technician and both of their children are in school. For three years, she has been running a business buying and selling fruit. She plans to use this loan to purchase oranges, tree tomatoes, citrus fruits, and mangoes that she will sell to meet the growing demand of her business.

Once Rosine has repaid her loan to us we will then choose another recipient to help - and the cycle will continue!