Bokk Kholl 2 Group

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to the Khady Gueye group, consisting of Khady Gueye, Khady Fall, Khadidiatou Gueye, Khoury Niang, Mariétou Gueye by Senegal Ecovillage Microfinance Fund (SEM) in Senegal. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the 11 months of this loan, Senegal Ecovillage Microfinance Fund (SEM) will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

Bokk Khol (hearts united) is a group lending initiative. Group lending, also known as solidarity lending, is a mechanism that allows a number of individuals to provide collateral or guarantee a loan through a group repayment pledge. The incentive to repay is based on peer pressure; if one person in the group defaults, the other group members make up the payment amount.

The women of Bokk Khol have divided their micro-loan among thirteen group members. The members have used their loans to increase the productivity of their individual businesses and entrepreneurial activities, including small commerce, vegetable growing and more. Ndeye Khady Gueye is the president of the group. The mother of five and grandmother of four, she sells vegetables at her stand next to the main road. She travels to the neighboring village of Potou, where there is a vegetable market every Tuesday. She brings back an assortment of vegetables to sell, including eggplants, tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers, peppers, manioc, onions, and radishes. Many of these vegetables are part of Senegal’s national dish: ceebu jen (or thieboudienne). Although the main part of the dish is fish and rice, the best ceebu jen has many spices and flavors, and plenty of vegetables.

Ndeye often sells to customers on credit systems, as many of the women in the village are dependant upon husbands who work outside the village and send them money in the mail. Ndeye will give them vegetables and let them pay when they receive the money from their husbands at the end of the month. She is confident of their financial stability, however, and of her ability to make her repayments on time.

The women of Bokk Khol are almost all married with children. Before they received their loan from The SEM Fund, they were a ‘tontine’ or local lending group. They would gather every week to make tea, eat peanuts, and contribute a small amount of money each that one member would get to take home. In forming their solidarity group for their SEM loan, they choose those members who were most financially trustworthy. They are proud that they have had no problems with repayment. If one member of the group lags behind in a monthly payment, the others will help her out and be repaid later. They are excited to continue to expand their businesses and look forward to future loans