Festus Che Afabunwi

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to Festus Che Afabunwi by GHAPE in Cameroon. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the next 18 - 18 months, GHAPE will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

Entrepreneur: Festus Che Afabunwi

Location: Mile 3 Nkwen

Loan Amount: $800

The loan of $800 was disbursed on April 16th, 2007. The availability of investment capital brought happiness to the family. He is very excited and appreciative. He will be reporting concrete realization of his business plan in the days ahead. He is optimistic that he will start repaying his loan in August 2007 as per loan conditions.

Festus, who is 42 years old, is very involved with his GHAPE center in Bamenda, the North West Province of Cameroon. He is the current Center Chief, which means he takes responsibility for gathering the clients together for meetings and helps to resolve group problems. He also is responsible for knowing each site of business and checking up on the progress of the entrepreneurs within his center. He has been a GHAPE member for four years and has used four Empowerment Credits (loans) in that time. The most recent loan he has been issued was for 400,000 FCFA ($1000 USD) and using it to buy a car that he will fix-up and resell. Festus is a Panner-beater, by profession, which means he beats out the dents from vehicles. This skill is very important in the Bamenda community, where driving is a contact sport. Eighteen years ago, he learned the trade from another master Panner-beater, which took three years of study. He now works in a mechanics garage with a group, but he has been buying vehicles to resell with his help from GHAPE.

Festus never tried to get loans before hearing about GHAPE. Friends of his had been pooling together money for a short time in order to invest within their group, but other than that, he did not know about microfinance. He heard about the group from a friend who was involved and thought he would try it out to help support his three children. His wife left him two years ago and does not help him take care of their children. The three have school tuition amounting to 250,000 FCFA ($625 USD) which he pays for with his work, and he cooks and takes care of the house for them as well. Festus was educated through primary school and then he went to learn a trade.

GHAPE has brought a lot of improvement and good change to Festus and his family. “Morally, GHAPE brings up morals through advice sharing from members and you don’t have to solve problems on your own,” says Festus. “The best thing is the idea sharing, it helps a lot. There are certain mistakes you make that you don’t realize and GHAPE helps you point out those mistakes.” Festus hopes for bigger loans from GHAPE in the future to help his business grow more