January 19, 2012, 2:07 EST – Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo
I spent my second full day in Kinshasa with the HOPE Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) staff. Once again I spent the day in the field: this time visiting repayment meetings. As I said in yesterday’s post, since the election at the end of November, things have been unsettled in the capital city of Kinshasa. The staff is working hard to get our program back to normal, working hard to catch up on both repayments (collecting payments on existing loans) and disbursements (distributing new loans). So while I wasn’t able to see a normal operating environment while I was in Kinshasa, I did manage to cram a lot of action into two short days.
HOPE frequently refers to our “96 percent repayment rate”, which means that about four percent of our loans get written off. That’s a remarkably low percentage. I’ve spent my career managing credit programs at Capital One, and four percent is a great loss rate in any country, but particularly in the countries where HOPE operates. The key is careful client selection on behalf of the loan officer and supervisor, the solidarity of the group, and the diligence that the staff shows in tracking and managing delinquencies.
Having already visited several groups that are “current,” or fully paid up on their loans, today I asked to visit groups that are in some stage of delinquency. I traveled around the Gombe section of Kinshasa with Jean-Guy, our loan supervisor, and Margeurite, one of our loan officers. Our mobile collections squad visited several groups and had a successful day. Our loan officers were firm but compassionate and collected between some and all of the money that was in arrears.
In the late afternoon I walked the HOPE DRC leadership team through a set of new operational tools, designed to make our processes more consistent and efficient.
I will be leaving for home tomorrow afternoon. I will fly from Kinshasa to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, then to Rome, then to Washington Dulles airport. I will board my flights with fully charged electronics, sleep aids, and lots of memories of a great trip. I will arrive back in the States in the late morning on Saturday. I hope that you’ve enjoyed these blog posts. I’ve certainly enjoyed writing them. God bless all of you!
January 18, 2012, 4:33 EST – Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo
I’m exhausted this evening, so this post will be short. I truly lived the life of a loan officer today, and as a result, I’m ready for an early bedtime.
HOPE Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has had a challenging couple of months, starting with the general elections that took place on November 28. There were accusations of fraud and tampering even before the election happened, and as you’d imagine, those cries grew louder after the election.
When the results were released, the incumbent was proclaimed the winner by a huge margin, which led to violence across the country in early to mid-December. Cognizant of recent unrest in other African countries, we decided to temporarily stop loan disbursements (new and renewal loan payouts), because we did not want to put our staff and clients in harm’s way. The unrest abated just as the country celebrated the Christmas holiday, followed by several DRC national holidays. The consequence is that we’re tracking behind our disbursement schedule, and the HOPE DRC team is hustling to catch up. I rode around Kinshasa with Seguy, one of our supervisors, and Sarah Simba, our executive assistant in HOPE DRC, who helped me out with translation.
Kinshasa traffic is incredibly heavy, and the quaint Western notions of right-of-way, defensive driving, and passing on the left simply do not apply. Seguy did a masterful job of navigating the traffic without any fender benders.
We did three disbursements in different parts of the Righini section of Kinshasa. We were all ready to do a fourth, but Seguy rightfully did not feel comfortable with the group’s level of solidarity. So that disbursement will be delayed until the group members are individually and collectively comfortable with the loan amount. I was proud of Seguy for not letting our zeal for disbursements make us cut corners on underwriting. That warmed my heart. We’re making uncollateralized loans in one of the poorest countries on earth, so we can never take credit risk and underwriting for granted.
I was ragged by the end of the day, but thankful that I was there as we continued our relationships with about 50 clients.
January 17, 2012, 12:15 EST – Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo
I send you greetings from Kinshasa, the capital city of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Kinshasa is right across the Congo River from Brazzaville. It’s about a 10-minute boat ride. Sounds like an easy day, right?
I started the morning at HOPE Congo in Brazzaville. My plan was to spend the morning with Manny Palis, our managing director of HOPE Congo, and his leadership team, then leave in the early afternoon to catch the ferry to Kinshasa. After morning devotions I parted ways with Peter Greer, who is flying back to the States, and David Johnson, who is flying to Liberia for his next photo shoot. Then, at about 10:30 a.m., we got a call from the HOPE DRC staff, saying that since today is a national holiday in DRC, the last ferry leaves at noon. Uh oh. We hustle over to the river crossing. Fortunately Manny was kind enough to come with me so we could finish our conversation.
Crossing the river is a mysterious process, particularly for those of us who don’t speak French. It involves filling out forms, quite a bit of arguing, and prolonged periods of time where I am not in possession of my passport. Fortunately, we have dedicated and ingenious staff members on both sides of the river who help us get across smoothly. The ferry ride itself is a respite between the customs processes on each side of the river.
On the other side of the river, I am met by Mercy Allah-Asra, the managing director of HOPE DRC, our microfinance institution in DRC. Allah-Asra has led HOPE DRC for the past two years, and his home country is Chad. Since today is a national holiday, there is almost zero traffic in the city at 2 p.m. Normally the traffic is brutal on a workday. Our office is closed, so I check into Caritas, a Catholic guesthouse where I’ll stay while I’m here, and I spend most of the afternoon working, resting, and blogging of course.
Allah-Asra and I are going out to dinner tonight. Recall in a previous post when I talked about our country leaders introducing us to eclectic and adventurous foods. I’m curious and nervous to see what awaits.
For the next three days I will be visiting HOPE DRC with a similar agenda as I’ve had in Rwanda and Republic of Congo. I will spend most of my time in the field observing client meetings, and the rest of the time meeting with Allah-Asra and his staff.
January 16, 2012, 3:34 EST – Brazzaville, Republic of Congo
Another great day in Brazzaville! We started the day at 8 a.m. at the HOPE Congo offices with morning devotions. I led the staff through morning devotions, studying Romans 5: 1-8.
Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.
You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
I’ve repeatedly come back to this passage during my time at HOPE. It is so encouraging and poetic, and it puts our daily trials into a larger perspective. Later in the day, when our loan officer was leading his clients through devotions during a repayment meeting, I heard him allude to the Romans passage that we reviewed during staff devotions. Daily staff devotions are core to our mission at HOPE International: we must be spiritually fed as staff members if we are going to minister to our clients.
Then we piled into the car and visited client repayment meetings throughout the morning. We are creating greater consistency and excellence in our group repayment meetings, with a methodology called the 5W’s. This meeting structure is lovingly borrowed from our brothers and sisters at CCT, our partner in the Philippines.
The 5W’s are:
- Welcome the clients, make any opening announcements.
- Worship, where the group leader and loan officer lead the group in singing and prayer.
- Word, a combination of devotions, client testimonies, and biblically based business training.
- Work, where client payments are (almost always) repaid and client records are updated.
- Wrap-up, a chance for the loan officer to encourage the clients and make any last announcements.
With the 5W’s methodology, a group repayment meeting should take approximately one hour. The first meeting we visited was with a loan officer named Bigael, who has been trained in the 5W’s methodology. I was very encouraged. The meeting lasted about 70 minutes, and he led the meeting very confidently. We will fully roll this out in March in HOPE Congo and HOPE DRC.
Our second meeting was with a loan officer named Chancey, and this meeting did not use the 5W’s methodology. (Chancey will be trained in March.) Chancey has a tremendous heart for the Lord and did an excellent job leading the group in devotions. The biggest difference between the two methodologies is the efficiency with which the Work section is completed. This second meeting took 20 minutes longer than the first, entirely driven by the Work section. Suffice to say that I’m eagerly awaiting the 5W’s rollout in March!
Peter and I visited the meetings with Xavier Byarufu, the operations manager for HOPE Congo. Xavier previously lived in Uganda, working for a large microfinance organization, but came to HOPE Congo for the Christian mission. He joined in November and has already had a tremendous impact operationally.
January 15, 2012, 11:26 EST – Brazzaville, Republic of Congo
The Sabbath begins with a 9:00 a.m. church service at Rehoboth Church in downtown Brazzaville. This is Manny Palis’ (our managing director of HOPE Congo) home church, led by Pastor Ndeke. It’s a very large church—our service had about 1,500 attendees—and Peter got the chance to deliver a brief devotion and talk about HOPE Congo’s work in the city. It was a wonderful service, with beautiful singing and a heartfelt message from Pastor Ndeke about the importance of family. The service lasted for a solid three hours, so we left the church spiritually fed but physically kind of hungry.
Peter and I went to a Lebanese restaurant with Nate and Allie Hill, who recently moved to Brazzaville. Nate recently left Ernst & Young to become the finance manager for HOPE Congo. His wife, Allie, taught English as second language classes when they lived in Nashville, and is now teaching several English classes a week to the HOPE Congo staff and conducting client interviews. They are settling in to Brazzaville very well. Both of their moms are visiting Brazzaville in a couple of weeks, which is very exciting for Nate and Allie.
I’ve gotten a couple of questions while I’ve been gone that I’ll quickly respond to:
Q. What do you eat when you’re traveling in Africa?
A. Good question, Mom. Generally I eat quite well while I’m here. The key is to stay hydrated and caffeinated, but bottled water, Coca-Cola, and coffee are quite prevalent. I typically pack one CLIF bar for each day I’m going to be traveling as an extra source of protein. Our local staff members enjoy introducing us to the local food, and occasionally convince/trick the weak-stomached Americans to eat unusual body parts of animals. On my trip to Ukraine in October I had a bite of a local delicacy called “Brezhnev’s Surprise,” and I haven’t been able to look at a sheep since.
Q. How do you choose where to open new programs?
A. Part of HOPE’s mission is to go to the “hard places” so that we’re able to reach those living in poverty who are not served by either the local banking system or even by other large microfinance institutions. For example, in Africa we have programs in Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Rwanda, not in the more competitive markets like Nairobi and Kampala. Reaching those in hard places is not only aligned with our social mission but also reduces the risk of our clients getting over-extended by taking out multiple microfinance loans.
Tomorrow is a big day. We’ll be spending the day at HOPE Congo and visiting client meetings for most of the day.
We leave Rwanda bright and early for a flight to Brazzaville. Brazzaville is the capital city of the Republic of Congo and home of HOPE Congo, one of our microfinance institutions. While our Rwanda program is a “savings-led” program where we provide operational support and training resources for savings groups, HOPE Congo is a “credit-led” program where we make small loans to local entrepreneurs. The loans start as low as $80. The group lending model is quite similar to the group savings model described in Rwanda. The groups tend to be about 15-20 people, and there is a strong sense of solidarity that develops within the group. Also, as in the savings groups, we deliver a Christian message and/or biblically based business training.
The flight is smooth, and we arrive in the late morning. HOPE Congo is led by Manny Palis, our managing director. Manny has spent his whole career in international development, with career stops in Cambodia, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Kosovo, and now Congo. Manny has an incredible heart to serve the Lord and has done an excellent job building a strong staff. Peter Greer and I had a two hour meeting with Manny and his key staff members in the afternoon, reviewing several key operational improvements that have been implemented over the past three months. I was very encouraged by the team’s progress.
Peter and I have been joined on our journey by David Johnson, president of Silent Images. David’s ministry is to mobilize professional photographers to support other nonprofits. He has been traveling with us to document our clients’ businesses and their stories, through a combination of still photos and video. David is a very gifted photographer who has worked all over the world – you should check out his website: http://www.silentimages.org/. Taking pictures in the countries where we operate can be very challenging, and David has a talent for taking excellent pictures without drawing unwanted attention.
We are staying at SIL, a missionary compound in Brazzaville. It’s very comfortable and quiet and an excellent place to rest and reflect after a busy week.
God bless all of you. I’ll submit another post tomorrow.
Our day started bright and early this morning. We met Jeffrey Lee, the CEO of Urwego Opportunity Bank, for breakfast. Urwego is one of the largest MFIs in the HOPE network, and under Jeffrey’s leadership it has managed to grow very quickly while keeping credit risk at reasonable levels. There are many best practices at Urwego that can be applied elsewhere in our network. Jeffrey and the entire Urwego staff live out their Christian faith every day while serving roughly 100,000 clients across Rwanda.
Following breakfast we went to Urwego’s offices for morning devotions. There was wonderful music and singing from the Urwego staff. Peter Greer, the president of HOPE International, was the guest speaker for the day’s devotions. Peter lived in Rwanda for three years, and is the only muzungu (affectionate term for “white guy”) I’ve come across in Rwanda who is fluent in Kinyarwanda, the local language. Peter and I are traveling together in Rwanda and will fly to the Republic of Congo tomorrow morning. After devotions we headed out of the city and traveled to the Byumba province. The scenery in Byumba was stunning. It looks like the remote parts of Hawaii, with very green and lush vegetation and beautiful mountains. The villagers mostly make their living by farming, often on the face of the mountain. They use “terracing” for this mountain farming, where the villagers create stair steps all the way up the mountain so that they’re able to grow crops on flat surfaces.
We visited with more savings groups, and saw more evidence of the savings progression that I described in yesterday’s post. We went to a village in Byumba where a new church was being built. A lot of the funding for the church building project came from increased tithing from the congregation, which was driven by the increased savings and prosperity enabled by the savings groups.
I am writing this post from the Kigali airport where I am straightening out some complications relating to my flight tomorrow. The last time I came to Africa I created a list titled “Things in America that I will never complain about now that I’ve traveled to Africa.” Included on this list were tap water, public utilities, Internet service, potholes, peanut butter, and getting through customs. I will now reluctantly add “airline customer service” to that list. Please note that this is not a knock against Ethiopian Air, my best friend forever. I’m flying Rwandair to Brazzaville tomorrow, and they have been very challenging to deal with this evening.
Peter and I are off to Brazzaville, the capital city of the Republic of Congo and the home of HOPE Congo, tomorrow. It’s my second time to Brazzaville, and I am really looking forward to my trip.
Thanks for reading!
January 12, 2012, 5:02 EST – Kigali, Rwanda Today was a wonderful day. I had a chance to visit two Anglican parishes where we met with members of our savings groups. One parish was in downtown Kigali, and the other one was about one hour away from downtown. It was so encouraging to meet the group members and hear their stories. It was also a nice opportunity to get to know our staff better. Chris Ordway and I traveled with Marie Jeanne, our lead trainer for our Anglican Church program; Kayira, our field coordinator for the Kigali diocese; and Panina, who is the director of programs for the Anglican Church in Kigali.
The stories that the group leaders shared with us were very inspiring. They described the process of how HOPE’s savings group methodology is impacting their lives over a multi-year time period. The pattern varies by group but goes something like this:
- The group is formed, typically consisting of 15-20 members of the community looking to lift themselves out of poverty. The group gets initial training from HOPE and our church partner to understand best practices on how to organize and manage the group.
- The group members begin saving, usually at levels that seem incredibly small. But they are beginning to build solidarity and confidence among the group. A typical starting savings amount is 100 Rwandan francs per week, which is about 15 cents per group member per week. Along the way, the group receives biblically based business training from our staff members to equip them to be stronger businesspeople.
- As they invest more time and energy into cultivating their businesses, the amount that they are able to save begins to increase, from 15 cents per week to 30 cents, then 60 cents, and so on. At this stage, the group uses the savings to take care of family essentials, such as adequate shoes and nutritious meals.
- Once these essentials are in place, the group begins to generate enough funds to fund the purchase of assets. One group started by buying a single goat. Another bought a sewing machine to help its members be more efficient seamstresses.
- Things continue to develop, and the group’s assets grow. One musically-inclined group bought musical instruments, and now makes an ongoing source of income by playing weddings and concerts in the village. Another purchased a car, and they rent the car to others in the village. Some of the groups have saved so much that they opened a group savings account with a local bank. The group leaders proudly showed us their bank passbooks which in two cases have a balance of over one million Rwandan francs (over $15,000)!
- At the same time, the group members are doing more and more to benefit their families. Some groups are able to afford schooling for their children for the first time. Others can now purchase health insurance.
- And most importantly, their spiritual lives are being transformed. They are becoming more actively involved in the Church and using their prosperity to increase tithing and support for the church. One group is in the process of building a storefront which they will rent out to local businesses. They will let the church use part of the storefront rent-free!
- Finally, some of the members of the older, more established groups serve as mentors for the groups that are just getting started or struggling to get going. This is how transformation of families expands to transformed communities.
It was so encouraging to hear their stories, and I can’t wait to visit more of our savings groups tomorrow. We will be traveling to Byumba, about 90 minutes outside of Kigali. I’ll have more to report then!
January 11, 2012, 2:49 p.m. (EST) – Kigali, Rwanda
by Dave Wasik, VP of Operations
I arrived in Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda, in the mid-afternoon today, after about 24 hours on the move. The flights were amazingly uneventful—praise the Lord!—and I’m excited to be in Rwanda for the first time. This is the home of our largest savings program, a church partnership with the Rwandan Anglican Church, and I will spend most of the next two days in the field watching our savings groups in action. I will also be visiting Urwego Opportunity Bank, one of the largest microfinance institutions in the HOPE network.
I am staying with the Ordway family while I’m here. HOPE is very blessed to have the Ordways as part of our team. Chris Ordway previously worked as an executive at Motorola in their mobile handset division. He got to know HOPE through our fundraising events in Chicago, then visited our partnership with Esperanza International in the Dominican Republic, and then last year joined HOPE full time and moved to Kigali. Chris is here with his wife, Anne, and his daughters Madeline, Caroline, and Lucy. It’s remarkable to see how connected and acclimated they are after only five months!
Tomorrow is a busy day for this weary traveler. Chris and I will spend the morning visiting savings groups in the outskirts of Kigali, then have lunch with some friends from Living Water, a Christian organization dedicated to bringing clean water to the developing world. One thing that’s already evident is that there’s a vibrant community of Christian nonprofit organizations here in Kigali, and I’m looking forward to learning more about Living Water during our lunch. Then it’s off to see more savings groups in the afternoon.
The trip is off to a great start—Rwanda is a country with a beautiful spirit. More to come in tomorrow’s post!
January 10, 2012, 7:44 a.m., Dulles Airport – Washington, D.C.
Greetings friends of HOPE! My name is Dave Wasik, and I serve as the VP of Operations at HOPE International. My job is to oversee our programs around the world. I joined HOPE in July of 2011 after many years working in banking.
As background, HOPE has two types of programs: microfinance institutions (MFIs), where HOPE provides small loans ($80-$2000) to local entrepreneurs, and savings and credit association programs (SCAs), where we provide operational funding and technical support to catalyze savings groups. In both MFI and SCA programs, we also share the Word of God with our clients and provide them with biblically based business training.
I am beginning a 10-day trip to Africa to visit several HOPE programs. I will start my trip in Kigali, Rwanda. Rwanda is a relatively small nation (it’s roughly the same size as Maryland) with approximately 11 million residents. Rwanda is the home of our largest SCA program, which has over 75,000 members, as well as the home of Urwego Opportunity Bank, one of the largest MFIs in our network. It will be my first time in Rwanda, and I am very excited to see both of our programs there.
After three days in Rwanda, I will travel to the Republic of Congo, where I will visit HOPE Congo, our microfinance institution in Brazzaville, the capital city. I will be in Brazzaville for four days. We have recently rolled out a new structure and process for our group meetings (more on that in a future post), and I am eager to see our progress. We are also introducing two new tools to the field which will help us better equip our loan officers and improve the collection of operational data, and I’ll be reviewing those tools with our leaders in Brazzaville.
Finally, I will be traveling to Kinshasa to visit HOPE DRC, our microfinance institution in the Democratic Republic of Congo. My agenda in Kinshasa is similar to what I’m seeking to accomplish in Brazzaville. The additional dynamic is that in DRC there have been protests relating to recent presidential and parliamentary elections, and I’m interested to see how our business is returning to normal after a few weeks of election-related turbulence.
One of many great things about working for HOPE is having the opportunity to go on these international trips, and with practice I’ve become more effective at traveling light. So I’ve got a briefcase and one suitcase that I’m carrying on. However, on this journey I will also be bringing a desktop computer over to our Brazzaville office. This computer has been used for the last few years at our HOPE headquarters in Lancaster, Pa. It has been lovingly refurbished by Christopher Blank, our one-man IT department, and will now be used in the Congo. HOPE is a very cost-conscious organization, driven by our Christian call to good stewardship. Given that our loans to our clients start at only $80, every expenditure becomes a choice between spending money on overhead and funding the next loan for our clients. Of course we choose funding the loan wherever possible, so we work hard to save money on flights, lodging, and, yes, purchasing and shipping computers. The computer is securely packed in a hard-shell suitcase and weighs just under 50 pounds (no bag fee!). I check it in, hoping that it will be waiting for me in Africa.
I will be blogging throughout my trip, with at least one post per day. Please check back to follow my progress!
I spent my second full day in Kinshasa with the HOPE Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) staff. Once again I spent the day in the field: this time visiting repayment meetings. As I said in yesterday’s post, since the election at the end of November, things have been unsettled in the capital city of Kinshasa. The staff is working hard to get our program back to normal, working hard to catch up on both repayments (collecting payments on existing loans) and disbursements (distributing new loans). So while I wasn’t able to see a normal operating environment while I was in Kinshasa, I did manage to cram a lot of action into two short days. 
