Sun Sok

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to Sun Sok by MAXIMA Mikroheranhvatho Co., Ltd. in Cambodia. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the next 12 months, MAXIMA Mikroheranhvatho Co., Ltd. will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

I visited Sun Sok's house on a beautiful day in mid-November to get an update on his Kiva-funded loan and his business. The area he lives in is home to many jasmine growers, a beautiful stretch of land that hugs the Bassac River about 15 kilometers southeast of Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh.

With me on my visit was Sarath Tep, a credit officer for Kiva partner MFI Maxima. When we stopped by, Sun wasn't in a very talkative mood. He quickly ceded the conversation to his daughter, Sokchan Ly, and his wife, Som Lat, who were sitting on daybeds under their house assembling jasmine garlands. As Son tended to his garden nearby, Sokchan and Som told us about the family's business ventures.

The family businesses of growing and selling jasmine, bananas, and longan (a lychee-like fruit) are doing very well. Sun and family farm on three plots of land that they own, and grow more on an additional plot that they rent. They also contract with other growers in the area, buying jasmine and longan for resale in markets in Phnom Penh.

Sokchan and Som said that this $1,200 loan was Sun's fourth from Maxima, and that Maxima was the only MFI or bank from which Son had ever borrowed. $500 of the loan was used to contract jasmine growers, $250 went to contract longan growers, and the remaining $450 was spent on planting bananas.

During our interview, 30-year-old daughter Sokchan answered queries about the family's principal business of growing and selling jasmine with breezy confidence. The more we talked, the clearer it became that Sokchan was heir apparent to the family's jasmine trade.

Most of the jasmine the family sells is fresh, and is used in garlands or other adornments found in Cambodian ceremonies such as weddings or funerals, or given as an offering at Buddhist pagodas and temples. Some of the jasmine they sell is also dried, and likely winds up being blended with tea. Sokchan said they travel to Phnom Penh once a week to sell their jasmine, and that wholesalers also come direct to their house to buy it as well.

The scale of the family's trade is impressive. Sokchan said that in peak season they sell about 50 kilograms (or 110 pounds) of jasmine a week. During peak season, they also take on up to three paid employees who aren't family members, which is unusual among the small entrepreneurs I've met as few employ paid workers outside the family.

The price jasmine fetches varies wildly, depending on the season. In the dry season when jasmine is plentiful, a kilogram sells for about 8,000 rial ($2 U.S ), and in the wet season when jasmine is more difficult to grow, a kilogram can sells for as much as 80,000 rial ($20 U.S.) a kilogram. At best, the family's nets a profit of 500,000 rial ($125 U.S.) per week, a relatively fantastic income in a country where the per capita annual income is about 600 U.S. dollars.

I realized that of all the Kiva-funded Maxima clients I'd seen so far, Sun Sok's family was the closest thing to middle class I'd seen. Their house is much bigger than others in the neighborhood, they own a good amount of land, they have an artist in the family (a son, who specializes in painting Angkor Wat scenes), and their youngest daughter is university-bound (though Sokchan said she was only able to finish school through grade 9). I wondered, were these the kind of people microfinance was really meant to reach?

Yes!

Sarath, the Maxima loan officer I was with, pointed out that business for Sun Sok's family wasn't always this good. He said that since he'd had their account, he'd seen them carefully grow their business. It was the loans they got from Maxima over the course of a few years, along with lots of hard work genuine business savvy, that helped them find such success.

It's likely their business may soon outgrow the world of microfinance, and that if needed they will move on to borrowing larger sums from a commercial bank. If that happens, microfinance will have really done its job by helping to move people up the economic ladder.

Pictured in the photo that accompanies this journal update: Sokchan, holding one of the family's jasmine products, with her father Sun Sok.

About Maxima:

Maxima Mikroheranhvatho Co. Ltd. was founded in March 2000 by a group of friends with the objective of providing financial services to low income clients through small loans to individuals, groups and small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Maxima aims to contribute to the economic and social progress of rural Cambodia by making credit available to those who lack access to loans from traditional commercial banks. Maxima has been a Kiva partner since May 2007, and since then Kiva lenders have helped Maxima fund more than 1000 loans.

To see if Maxima has loans in need of funding by Kiva lenders, click here. Or consider joining the Maxima fan club -- aka the Maxima lending team -- on Kiva!

Mr. Sun Sok has paid off his loan. He would like to say thank you to all the KIVA lenders who funded his loan through MAXIMA so he could improve his standard of living. He is very happy because the loan was enough for his purposes and he hopes his lenders will all help him again next time.

Dear Lender,

Happy Year of the Ox! Thank you for supporting a Kiva entrepreneur in Cambodia.

It is the first day back in the Maxima office after Khmer New Year, and the office is abuzz with discussions of people describing their vacations. Our Kiva Coordinator, Sophal, a bright, 22-year-old Khmer girl and one of my closest friends in the office, asks me where I went.

“Battambong,” I reply, trying to pronounce the name correctly. After a few feeble attempts, Sophal at last can understand the city I mean.

“Did you dance, Julie?” She asks.

“Yes! We danced at the pagoda all three nights!” I exclaim.

“S’bai, at? Was it happy?”

“S’bai s’bai! Very happy!”

My name is Julie Picquet, and I am a Kiva Fellow working with Maxima Mikroheranhvatho, a Kiva Field Partner based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. With two-thirds of my fellowship complete, I can hardly believe that I have less than one month left with this beautiful country and its inspiring citizens.

Kiva’s Partnership with Maxima

As a Kiva Fellow, I was placed with one of Kiva’s Field Partners to provide support and transparency into the money lending process. In the past nine weeks, I have visited Kiva entrepreneurs and worked closely with Maxima staff to write borrower updates, streamline our upload processes, and help with translation. As you may know, all entrepreneurs on Kiva’s web site are supported by local Field Partners, or microfinance institutions (MFIs) like Maxima, who are Kiva’s liaison between Kiva lenders and Kiva borrowers. They choose which of their clients are eligible to receive Kiva support, write and upload business profiles, disburse loans, collect payments, write journal updates, and respond to lender comments. Currently, Maxima is the only Field Partner to be completely owned and operated by Cambodians.

Despite the prominence of microfinance institutions in Cambodia (more than eighteen major banks and counting), Maxima stands apart from the rest as a boutique firm. As the smallest of Kiva’s four field partners in Cambodia, Maxima has the flexibility to tailor its loan products to best fit client demands. For example, some loan products include flexible interest rates, allowing clients to choose a lower interest rate if they can come to the Maxima office to make their payments, rather than have the loan officer drive to the clients’ residences. This cuts down on significant costs for the MFI, who can in turn pass the savings on to the client.

Riding on the back of a Maxima motorbike, interviewing borrowers and hearing about their business operations, I am impressed by the enthusiasm villages show when a loan officer and I drive past their houses. Sothea, a loan officer whose territory is the Koh Dach Island on the Mekong river, where she was raised and her parents still live, teaches me about customer service. “I always smile, the whole time I’m here,” she says, “My clients are everywhere, I want them to see me happy!”

Client Profile: The Um Family’s Mushrooms

Maxima’s clients seem happy, indeed. In the past nine years, Maxima has disbursed over $6 million dollars of loans and reached over 10,000 families. Maxima gives not only business loans, but also loans to build houses or to send children to school. In the homes I visit, I see the signs of development – children’s homework on the bamboo bed, taxi driving certificates pinned to the wall of a humble, wooden house. Piece by piece, Maxima’s loans help Cambodians improve their standard of living through sustainable business growth.

One example of this forward movement through small business entrepreneurship is exemplified through Sotheany Um and her family. When a credit offer and I approached the Um household, Sotheany’s father proudly told me that he could speak some French (which he learned when Cambodia was a French colony), so I said “Je m'appelle Julie.” He laughed and pulled up some chairs for Sothea and I to sit, while his daughter finished some work. During our interview, Sotheany’s young daughter ran around in pigtails and holding a balloon while we talked.

Sotheany is a hardworking businesswoman. This is her first microfinance loan, and she used all $700 of her loan to start up a mushroom business near the home she shares with her parents. She learned the mushroom growing trade from her brother-in-law, who had learned it from his uncle. She started the business about 6 months ago upon receiving the loan.

In this business, large, dark rooms are filled with vertical lines of segmented plastic bags, each filled with a mushroom fertilizer. The bags hang from floor-to-ceiling, and after a few weeks, wide, white mushrooms begin to sprout from the bottoms of each segment. The Ums built two buildings to grow mushrooms, each with over 5000 segmented bags. Sotheany’s father and brother-in-law enthusiastically showed us their mushroom huts and the mushrooms that are beginning to grow.

Sotheany sells her mushrooms on the island for 6000/kg for regular consumers, and 4000 or 5000/kg for wholesalers. One problem she faces is the lack of wholesalers to purchase her mushrooms. She may need to sell some of her mushrooms in Phnom Penh as well in order to increase her market. Sotheany is hopeful that she will be able to pay back her loan on time.

This video shows my interview with Sotheany, as well as her father and brother-in-law giving us a tour of the rooms where her mushrooms grow: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoHT7jC5tUw

I was deeply impressed with the hard work that the Um household had put into starting this business. Mr. Um had even painted signs to mark the entrance of the mushroom hut, in both Khmer and French. To me, it showed the care that they have taken to run their business successfully and increase their income. On the Koh Dach Island, most people are weavers, and I imagine that it must take courage and confidence to introduce a new product to the island.

Before leaving to visit more weavers on the island, I thanked the Um family for their time and wished her success: “Some nang lo’ah!” – “Good luck!” To Sotheany’s father I said, “Au revoir!”

Maxima Welcomes the New Year

Last week Maxima brought in monks to bless the staff for Khmer New Year and invited me to join. Upstairs in our office, desks were pushed aside, mats were spread, and shoes were removed. We sat down and listened to the monks chant, as they splashed us with water and showered us with flower petals. The following day at 7:30 am, I was picked up by Maxima’s driver and brought to our Khmer New Year Party, where we met up with our second branch and the 60 or so employees cooked together, ate together and danced together as a family. “S’bai at, Julie?” They ask. “Yes,” I say, “I am very happy. Are you?”

Cambodia’s recent history paints a very different picture than the one I have come to see in my time here. Development is underway, and in the wake of a genocide, social problems and political corruption, in the faces of my coworkers and the people they serve I see happiness and determination.

On behalf of Kiva, Maxima and its hardworking clients, I thank you for your continued support of our hard work. Together, we can bring sustainable solutions to poverty and facilitate development worldwide.

We wish you a happy and healthy Year of the Ox, and we hope to continue to partner with you in the future.

Very Sincerely Yours,

Julie Picquet

Maxima Mikroheranhvatho

Phnom Penh, Cambodia