Mercy Wairimu Njogu

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to MERCY WAIRIMU NJOGU by Ebony Foundation (Eb-F) in Kenya. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the next 16 - 18 months, Ebony Foundation (Eb-F) will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

When we visited Mercy at the nursery school/kindergarten, the children were on a break they were playing joyfully on the green grass, some had kites which they had made from previous classes and it was evident that they having so much fun in school. Nursery education in Kenya and most parts of Africa is viewed as a luxury usually parents prefer to take their children straight to primary school and skip nursery school due to financial constrains. That’s why on, our way there we only saw one nursery school which means that there is only one nursery school apart from hers which operates in the area. She is a dedicated teacher, she loves children. The school fees she charges are affordable.

She had planned to build anew classroom and furnish it. Well, she is about to complete building the classroom. The desks and the chairs are at the carpenters. She told us she has already collected prices and catalogues of books which she is intending to buy on the completion of the school. She is thanking the kiva fraternity for helping her achieve her objective of expanding the nursery school. Her dream is opening a primary school one day.

Mercy is a wonderfully pleasant and friendly person. She speaks the best English of any Ebony Foundation client I have met when making field visits to rural areas. Mercy operates a nursery school on a hill overlooking Ngorika, a farming settlement about 40 minutes outside Nakuru town, Kenya’s fourth largest urban area. Mercy is a trained and certified teacher. She has a National Level Certificate in teaching young children and has also been fully trained as a secretary. Indeed she worked in an office for a few years prior to opening her school.

Mercy’s school has been in operation for nearly four years. It is a private school and she charges tuition of 500 shillings (~ $7.50) per term. She built a bigger classroom and furnished it with new desks and chairs. She took the loan in anticipation of having more students in the school. Unfortunately this year there is an outbreak of measles and mumps in Ngorika, so only 24 children are currently enrolled.

Because her pupils are still very young, Mercy employs an activity-based teaching style. The children attend 5 days a week and each day is structured around a series of 6 activities meant to engage the children physically and intellectually. The activities also promote the development of their social skills, such as sharing, interacting with peers and elders and teamwork.

Mercy is pictured here with some of her students and Ebony Foundation Business Development Officer Henry.

Dear Kiva lender,

As a recent Kiva blog post (http://www.kiva.org/about/inside) discussed, the situation unfolding in Kenya has disrupted the day-to-day operations of many of Kiva’s microfinance partners, like Ebony Foundation.

James Maina, Director of Ebony Foundation (EbF) (http://www.kiva.org/about/aboutPartner?id=25), has provided the update below for you. Due to the exceptional circumstances (including lack of reliable internet) where James is working in Kenya right now, Kiva is posting this update on his behalf.

Thank you,

Kiva Team

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Dear Kiva Lenders,

I wish to thank you for your continued concern and support during this very difficult moment in Kenya’s history. We have been a peaceful Country in a generally troubled region and people sort of took the peace for granted.

The country is now battered almost to a pulp and blood spilt with vengeance, senseless killings and wanton destruction. Markets, food stores and shops have been looted. Hospitals are dysfunctional and health centers incapacitated by riots and barricades. The violence, death and destruction witnessed in the Country for the last couple weeks has jolted the Nation into conscience and every body is now craving normalcy.

While peace is slowly returning to all affected parts of the Country, the impact of the riots has been devastating. Hundreds of people have been killed turning thousands of innocent children into helpless orphans and over one million people have been displaced, becoming internal refugees over night.

The impact of the riots is most felt in the micro and small business sector. Over 1 million small businesses were looted and or burnt down destroying the only source of income to millions of Kenyans. Most of the fighting and destruction occurred in slum areas in Nairobi, Mombasa, Nakuru and Kericho in Rift Valley. These regions are home to over 70% of Ebony Foundation’s clients and as you can imagine almost all of our clients in these regions have been affected by the riots. Only one region- (Mount Kenya) which is home to about 20% of EbF’s clients was spared the violence. The economy in this safe region is now getting stretched as the residents have to now house the displaced population.

We have recently completed auditing the riot’s impact on our clients and as of yesterday about 4,900 of our clients had been badly affected by the riots:

-- About 1,532 of our clients were displaced and both their homes and business premises burnt down. This population is currently housed in church compounds and police stations.

-- Another 2,479 clients had their business premises burnt down or looted leaving them with no source of income at all.

-- 833 clients had their homes looted or burnt down and about 56 clients are missing and feared dead or critically injured.

We arrived at these figures through a survey being administered at holding grounds, police stations, and through reliable reports from groups and community leaders. Our staff and local group officials have also been committed to conducting field assessments. I am sending a photo today which you may share with the lenders. The biggest tasks at the moment are to feed and house the displaced people, and to finance the reconstruction of the small businesses that were affected in order to enable the people to reclaim their source of income. In addition, Ebony Foundation is now helping other MFI’s audit their clients.

Eb-F has formed the following committees to address the above issues:

-- A humanitarian committee that is working with the International Red Cross to provide food, shelter and medical care to the victims.

-- A business reconstruction committee that is working with the affected clients to re finance and rebuild the small businesses that were looted and/or burnt down.

-- A compliance committee that is studying the legal and contractual aspects of the affected loans to arrive at the best policy action.

Thus, we ask for your continued patience as many loan repayments will be late, and it even may be impossible for some loans to be repaid in full at all. Thank you for your patience as we work hard to address all of these difficult issues, to serve our borrowers and help them recover, and to repay loans as quickly and as much as is possible in the coming months.

Sincerely,

James Maina

Executive Director

Ebony Foundation

Kenya

After continuing non-payment to Kiva, all active Ebony Foundation loans have now been defaulted. Kiva will continue to pursue recovery of funds on these loans and apply funds proportionally to lenders if and as funds are received. However, Kiva staff have judged the likelihood of recovery on these loans to be sufficiently low such as to update the loan status of these loans to “defaulted”.

For further details on this default, please see Ebony Foundation’s Field Partner page