Practical Example of Microfinance

Opportunity International

Clementine Uzabakiriho is a young woman from Rwanda who was

given an active loan through the organization Opportunity
International. Her journey began in 2003 when she was given a $36
loan to begin a business with her husband which focuses on selling
sorghum to local retailers in their village as well as in a
neighbouring town. Sorghum is a one of the top 5 cereal crops in
the world and is used for animal feeds as well as food products such
as porridge and as a replacement for meat. Now on her 11th loan,
Clementine purchases 15,000 kilograms of sorghum three times a
week in Rwanda’s capital city of Kigali, and hires a truck to
transport it to her village. Her business success has greatly influenced her community by
providing others various employment opportunities. Her business now employs 41 neighbours to
load and unload the truck and process the sorghum. The hard work of both her and her husband
has enabled them to purchase livestock and enrol their children in school.

Fonkoze
Fonkoze is the largest microfinance institution (MFI) in Haiti, serving more than 45,000 women
borrowers most of whom live and work in the countryside of Haiti. With its network of 41
branches covering every region of Haiti, it is the only MFI that is truly national in scope. It is a
family of three institutions (Fonkoze, Fonkoze Financial Services and Fonkoze USA) working
“shoulder to shoulder” working towards the goal of helping the poor of Haiti remove themselves
from poverty. The principles of this organization are:

 Women constitute the backbone of the economy in Haiti.

 You can’t just give a woman a loan and then send her on her way – you have to
accompany her as she struggles to make her way out of poverty.
 All Haitians deserve a chance to participate in the economic development of their
country.
 A political democracy cannot survive without economic democracy.
 Nothing in Haiti can be effective without the endorsement and support of Haitians
living in the Diaspora, for it is those Haitians who keep the economy of Haiti afloat
through the remittances they send home

This organization functions through the use of four programs where clients are not only
participating in the loan programs, but are being "accompanied" with education, training, and
other important innovative services, like microinsurance.

STEP 1: Chemen Lavi Miyò, or the Road to a Better Life, reaches out to the poorest of the
poor. It accompanies them with training, one-on-one supervision and encouragement, confidence
building and other services like health care and home repair. It protects clients as they move
forward along a two-year road from abject misery until they have their own functioning
microenterprise and are ready to enter a microfinance program.

STEP 2: Ti Kredi, or Little Credit, reaches out to families that are not ready to manage a loan
as large as $75, the first loan in Fonkoze's core solidarity-group credit program. Ti Kredi offers
them a smaller initial loan of just $25, shorter repayment periods, and additional support from
their loan officer, and literacy classes.

STEP 3: Solidarity Group credit is Fonkoze’s core program. Groups of five close friends
organize themselves into solidarity groups that take out their loans together. These groups are
organized in turn into Credit Centers of 30-40 women that become long-term associations of
women devoted to individual and community economic and social development. Starting with
three-month loans of $75, women can grow within this program until they are borrowing sums as
large as $1,300 for six months. The groups meet together regularly for Literacy, Business
Training, and other educational programs.

STEP 4: Business Development provides year-long loans that start at $1,300 and can increase
without limit. It currently has clients borrowing $25,000 and more. This program helps clients
become part of the formal economy and create jobs in rural areas where there is very little
employment.

Recently Fonkoze has begun a child malnutrition program where children are screened for
malnutrition using a simple UNICEF measuring tape around the upper arm of the child. This
measurement indicates whether malnutrition is moderate or severe. Through a Fonkoze
partnership with Zanmi Lasante (Partners in Health), all malnourished children were given free
treatment at community-based outpatient clinics in the impoverished Central Plateau area
(Conger, 2011).
Conger, L. (2010). A Microfinance Network Fights Malnutrition in Haiti. Population Reference

Bureau. Retrieved from http://www.prb.org/Articles/2010/fonkozehaiti.aspx?p=1

Fonkoze (2011). Fonkoze: Building the economic foundations for democracy in Haiti. Retrieved

from http://www.fonkoze.org/.