Mary Benjamin's Group

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to the Mary Benjamin group, consisting of Mary Benjamin, Rukia Othman by BRAC Tanzania in Tanzania. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the next 10 months, BRAC Tanzania will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

Dear Lender,

Today I have the unique pleasure of sending you the very first Field Update on borrowers from BRAC Tanzania. You have all contributed to at least one of these Tanzanian women’s loans, and I am sure that you are wondering how they are doing!

My name is Sarah Forbes and I am a Kiva Fellow currently working with BRAC Tanzania, one of Kiva’s Field Partners. All of Kiva’s field partners are stand-alone organizations that partner with Kiva in order to receive loans for the borrowers that you as lenders choose to support. BRAC is one of the largest of these field partners, being one of the largest southern non-governmental organizations in the world. Kiva and BRAC work together in three different African countries – Uganda, South Sudan, and Tanzania. In Tanzania, we have been working together for about 18 months, providing loans to women who have been denied access to the formal financial sector. With more than 100 branches across the country, BRAC Tanzania is reaching tens of thousands of women working their way out of poverty. Your loans, which we provide to BRAC Tanzania at 0% interest, are enabling their programs to expand even further.

Over the past four months, I have had the great opportunity to meet with many of BRAC’s borrowers – women who meet the challenges before them with a strength and sense of humor of which I am in awe. Each one of these meetings has given me new perspective on life and work in Tanzania and what having access to credit can mean for these women.

Martha Kamagi, for instance, received her loan in April 2009 and has already used most of it to give her small business a significant boost. Or businesses, I should say, since like many women in Tanzania, Martha has three separate small businesses.

Unlike most women however, Martha’s primary business is house painting, a trade usually performed by men. She has been making a living by painting houses since 1983 and now has a large network through which she finds job opportunities. Her business is marketed by word of mouth and Martha’s mobile phone is probably one of her greatest assets. In a trade dominated by men, Martha claims to rarely have problems with the sex issue – in fact, many of her jobs come through male contacts in her field. She is doing her part to even the sex disparity, however, and has trained six other women to become house painters. The painting is seasonal work, though, so Martha also works as a seamstress and hair stylist. Creativity and manual labor mix to provide Martha with a steady income that, combined with her husband’s income, supports her four children and her mother in the small home that they own. With the loan from BRAC Tanzania, Martha no longer needs to borrow painting supplies from her local hardware shop, which charges exorbitant interest rates, and she has been able to invest in better sewing equipment and fabrics.

Like most of the borrowers I have spoken with, Martha expresses her desire that her children lead a better life than she has. For them she desires greater education and financial security. The groundwork that is set for the future is one of the greatest effects of microcredit. While it may not immediately lift a family out of poverty, it provides small means with which entrepreneurs can improve their businesses, increase their profits, and send their children to school, enabling the next generation the chance to lead the lives their parents wish for them.

BRAC Tanzania strives to give the female borrowers in their microfinance program these chances to improve their businesses, their lives, and those of their children. Each day, and with each loan, the talented and dedicated staff reach out to those who are in vulnerable positions and often marginalized by the formal business sector. While logistical constraints prohibit BRAC Tanzania’s staff from collecting journal updates for each of their Kiva borrowers, it is our hope that, with a new system in place, in the future you will be hearing more stories about the progress of these incredible women.

Thank you for your loan. I hope that you will continue to invest in the borrowers of BRAC Tanzania by lending to the currently fundraising loans.

Sincerely,

Sarah Forbes

Kiva Fellow

BRAC Tanzania

As an additional note, I would like to take this opportunity to mention the current situation regarding the Kiva website showing BRAC Tanzania’s delinquency rate to be near 30%. This does NOT reflect the true delinquency rate of the individual borrowers, but rather is the product of registration requirements here in Tanzania that are delaying the wiring of funds from BRAC Tanzania to Kiva. The Central Bank of Tanzania is requiring certain registration from BRAC Tanzania before it will send the repayment funds out of the country to Kiva. The paperwork is taking longer than expected, however, as soon as the required registration goes through the Central Bank of Tanzania, the funds will be sent and all repayments will be made to Kiva and to the lenders. We are now waiting on the clearance from the Central Bank of Tanzania and thank you for your patience and understanding as to why the repayments are delayed.