Em Ath

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to Em Ath by MAXIMA Mikroheranhvatho Co., Ltd. in Cambodia. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the next 20 months, MAXIMA Mikroheranhvatho Co., Ltd. will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

On a small island on the Mekong River, I visited Em Ath on a Wednesday morning. With me was Som On, a friendly credit officer working for MAXIMA, one of Kiva’s four partner microfinance organizations in Cambodia. As a Kiva Fellow at MAXIMA, I travel with loan officers and company employees to meet borrowers and see the impact of microfinance firsthand.

When Som On and I arrived, two of Em’s sons were just getting back from school. In Cambodia, most children go to school six days a week from 7:30 am through 11 am, when they return home to help their families with their chores and household duties.

The two children quickly changed from their school uniforms and came downstairs to watch us speak with their mother about her loan, along with the youngest brother. The oldest sons are age 20 and 17 and both work in construction. Em’s husband was out of the house, helping his nephew build a storefront to start a grocery stand on the island.

This is Em’s third microfinance loan with MAXIMA, and it is for $1000. Em and her husband are in the business of buying and selling firewood. Her husband cuts the wood and Em buys his and the wood from other woodsmen to sell in the nearby Kandal province.

With past loans, Em and her husband have purchased a gasoline-fueled chainsaw for $600, which her husband uses to cut wood safely and efficiently. With the current loan, Em bought more firewood from the other villagers to sell. Em can get about $100 worth of firewood from one tree, which she gets from the Koh Dach Island and the islands and villages around it. As their business grows and scales, the Ath family can increase profit, and in turn, improve their standard of living.

With the money they make from their firewood business, Em and her husband provide for their family. They send their two school-age sons to school, for 500 Reil a day (about 12 cents in $USD) each.

Em had one of her sons run and bring his father back to the home, so that he could show Som On and me his lumbar and the chainsaw he purchased. This video shows Som On and I at the Ath household: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shYGkT1_e_A

The Ath family is hard working and kind, and I am happy that their loans through MAXIMA and Kiva are helping them.Before leaving to visit more Kiva Borrowers in the village, I thanked Em for her time and wished her success: “Some nang lo’ah!” – Good luck!

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.

Join the Maxima fan club -- aka the Maxima lending team -- on Kiva!

This Journal Update was brought to you by Julie Picquet, Kiva Fellow for MAXIMA.

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