Lendwithcare.org supports important green initiative in the Philippines!

We have added our first sustainable social enterprise loan to the lendwithcare.org website to help tricycle taxi drives to acquire cleaner engines for their tricycles.  We are supporting an initiative launched by our partner in the Philippines, SEEDFINANCE and a local company called “Clean Engines Incorporated” (CEI) to help reduce air pollution in Metropolitan Manila.  This initiative aims to encourage local tricycle taxi drivers to switch over from two-stroke petrol and diesel powered engines (highly pollutant) to environmentally-friendly liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) engines.

In the Philippines 84% of the country’s population depends on tricycles (similar to rickshaws) for transport. At present, 70% of these tricycles have polluting two-stroke engines. This has a devastating impact on the environment as well as on the health of urban residents.

The local council of Mandaluyong City in Manila has  recently enacted legislation requiring all tricycles to switch over to cleaner liquefied petroleum gas (LPG),  which is undoubtedly beneficial in the long-term, but in the short-term is expensive  (sometimes unaffordable) for tricycle taxi drivers.
This is where lendwithcare and you specifically come in! We are going to help to make this happen.   For the first time, our microfinance partner (and not an individual entrepreneur) is requesting a large loan of $25,000 US Dlls to provide smaller loans of $500 to 50 motorized tricycle taxi so that they can pay for their vehicles to be switched over to LPG without crippling their livelihoods.

The loans are to be provided through a local financial co-operative called “The Rizal Technological University Employees Multi-Purpose Cooperative” (RTU-KMPC). The loans will be repaid over 18 months.  The RTU-KMPC will require tricycle drivers to become members before providing them with a loan to purchase the LPG toolkit that enables the change. Once the kit is installed, air pollution is significantly reduced but also tricycle drivers spend less money on fuel. As members they will also be entitled to access other financial and non-financial services of the co-operative and also share in its profits.
 

The various parties involved, SEEDFINANCE, CEI and the RTU-KMPC are liaising with the Mandaluyong City local government not only to stress the environmental and fuel efficiency aspects of the switch from diesel to LPG, but also to assist local tricycle drivers to pay for the change. CEI will provide training to LPG toolkit users, provide warranties and establish several maintenance shops throughout the city. The aim is to eventually extend the project and provide loans to more tricycle drivers and make Mandaluyong City a cleaner, less polluted and more pleasant place to live and work, and hopefully a role model to other areas in Manila and other cities in the Philippines.

To read more about this fantastic initiative and to support tricycle taxi drivers click here  

Ideal Source Of Finance To Bear Instant Economic Needs

Are you disabled or incapable to earn enough for you? It may transpire the circumstances when you would not be able to meet your ends due to shortage of money. Moreover, living on DSS benefits are also not sufficient to live by. Loans for people on DSS let you avail the desired sum of funds to fulfill your monetary hardships with no issues and mess. You do not have to stoop down as applying with this loan is the right path for you. The assist of these loans let you cover up your economic conundrums without any discomfort and complexity. 

There will be no rebuff even if you are bad creditor. Loans for people on DSS also approve the dire creditors with no rejections and dis approvals. Presence of bad factors in your credit report like CCJ, arrears, defaults, skipped or missed payments, bankruptcy, late payments etc. do not affect the loan approval. Lender do not discriminate the aspirants on the basis of the credit status. 

Applying via online method let you save a lot of time and effort. You need not require standing in lengthy queues and preparing widespread paper work to fax. There are various lenders available online offering this loan deal. What the aspirant has to do is to compare the loan quotes and also making negotiation is profitable in lowering down the rates. Once you are approved, the finances will send to your bank account to use without letting you leave the comfort of your residence or office. It let you get relieve from pecuniary stress within few clicks of a mouse.

Approval of same day loans can be given to that aspirant who will fulfill the terms that are required. The aspirant, who is permanent citizen of UK, complete 18 years, be in full time service and have checking account can obtain the assistance of this loan. Plus, it is also requires that the aspirant who stays on DSS benefits from the last same six month and have the saving of at least $500 in their bank account. 

Now, you need not be anxious if you are disabled or do not have sufficient funds to met your monthly expenditure and desire.

Women & microfinance: An International Women's Day celebration

‘She believed she could so she did’ - unknown

 

We all know that a lot of people around the world live in terrible conditions of poverty ...
But did you know that the great majority of them are women?

 And that if you help one woman out of poverty, she is likely to bring four more people with her?

 
And if you provide her with the means to create a sustainable income, she will make sure

Her children go to school ... instead of help at home

And have enough to eat

76% of the entrepreneurs funded through lendwithcare.org have been women 

 Together, let's help more!

Happy International Women’s Day! 


By the lendwithcare.org team www.lendwithcare.org
 

Lendwithcare in Cambodia | How a growing economy impacts on the poor

Lendwithcare on location in Cambodia

Recipient of an agricultural microloan through lendwithcare
© CARE/Nancy Thomas

The last time I visited Cambodia was in 2005 and as I walked out into the humid night air and towards Phnom Penh’s visibly transforming skyline, I was eager to find out how Cambodia had changed since my last visit.

This time I was not visiting Cambodia as a tourist but on behalf of CARE International UK, and lendwithcare. And before I had even reached my hotel in the heart of Phnom Penh I was struck by aspects of this rapidly developing country that I did not see (or at least notice) when I visited in 2005. Three particular aspects stood out to me over the next few days: Firstly, there are a lot of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working in Cambodia (in fact there are 3,000 NGOs currently registered with the Ministry of the Interior); secondly, a growing economy has led to increased migration to the cities, especially to find work in one of the growing number of garment factories (predominantly owned by South Korean and Chinese companies) on the outskirts of Phnom Penh; and thirdly, the microfinance sector has undergone very rapid growth.

My first observation should have been expected. Years of war and internal conflict made it impossible for Cambodia to take part in the economic development experienced by many of its neighbours towards the end of the 20^th Century and when the fighting did eventually stop in 1991, Cambodia and its people were left war-torn and devastated.  Over the last two decades this has started to change and in recent years, as my second observation indicates, some powerful regional investors have started to play for big stakes in Cambodia’s economy. In fact South Korea, China and Japan invested a combined $762.6m in Cambodia last year, representing 33% of total foreign investment, and all three replacing the UK as Cambodia’s largest foreign investor.[1]

A Village Savings and Loans Group in Koh Kong Province (CARE Cambodia)
© CARE/Nancy Thomas

Despite this growth, Cambodia remains one of Asia’s poorest countries (57.8% of the population live on less than $2 a day) and social development has not managed to keep pace with economic. When I met with the CARE country office in Phnom Penh they explained that development has been concentrated in Cambodia and has resulted in ‘increasing inequality between urban and rural areas, between rich and poor and for socially excluded groups … and the disparities in health, education and employment opportunities between different areas of the country and between different population groups, remains substantial.’ All of which provides an understandable context to the large number of NGOs I observed working in Cambodia.  Also, I quickly discovered that this disproportionately high number of registered NGOs is actually misleading since a lot are inactive and have ceased (or never in fact started) operations.  

My second and third observations were equally predictable. After all, it would be unusual to visit a developing country today without sharing the experience with a businessman from China or stumbling across the branch of some local microfinance institution. However, when I visited Cambodia this time, I was quite surprised by the speed with which both had come to dominate Cambodia’s economic landscape. The growth of the latter is particularly important to me since microfinance, and providing fair and effective financial services to the poor, is a key part of CARE’s work and I was eager to find out what impact this influx was having on the poor. The well-publicised cases of aggressive money lending practices in India and the devastating over-indebtedness this contributed to undoubtedly springs to mind when you think of market saturation of microfinance.

Unsurprisingly the growth of the Cambodian microfinance sector matches that of Cambodia’s overall economic growth over the last couple of decades. Emerging from a virtually non-existent financial sector in the early 90s as part of NGO-led programmes on financial inclusion, microfinance in Cambodia has subsequently developed into a much more sophisticated and commercialised machine. There are now 39 microfinance institutions operating in Cambodia, providing over 1.3 million people (9.2% of the population) with an array of financial and non-financial products and services.  And in keeping with the raison d’etre of microfinance, these institutions predominantly serve those who typically live outside the formal financial sector - namely women (81%) and people living in rural areas (80%).[2]However, like in India, Cambodia’s fast-growing microfinance sector faces some serious problems. Perhaps the two most worrying of which are: the prevalence of multiple lending and the lack of product diversification (i.e. credit is the main product offered by most MFIs).

Community Based Microfinance Organisation (CBMIFO) of CCSF in Takream
© CARE/Nancy Thomas

So when I met with our microfinance partner in the north-west province of Battambang - although reassured by the fact that CARE very carefully select the institutions with which they work -  I was understandably worried about how this rapidly changing sector had impacted on their operations. The Cambodian Community Savings Federation (CCSF) has been involved in providing essential financial services to the poor pretty much since the birth of microfinance in Cambodia. Set-up in 1998 as a Small Economic and Development project of CARE Cambodia, CCSF looked set to mimic the growth of the microfinance sector in general as it registered as a rural credit provider (independently of CARE) in 2003 and expanded operations. However, there are three specific qualities about CCSF that have meant it has not developed into a commercial institution but stayed true to its principles of trying to provide fair and effective financial services to the very poor. These qualities are: 

 1. CCSF is a credit union and therefore not driven by a need to generate profits for shareholders

2. As is suggested by the name, CCSF is primarily a provider of savings products for its members (1 of only 4 microfinance providers in Cambodia able to deposit savings) and provides a diverse range of products, which are tailored to suit the communities they serve. 

3. In the last 10 years instead of expanding operations quickly across the whole of the country (as many of its competitors have done), CCSF has remained focussed on serving the rural populations of North-West Cambodia. Not only allowing them to expand into more remote and underserved communities but also to know the communities and their financial practices well enough to meet their needs adequately.

It is these qualities, I believe, that have enabled CCSF to remain true to their mission of providing affordable financial and non-financial services to the poor over the last 10 years and avoid becoming involved in some of the harmful practices we know only so well.

As I left Cambodia two weeks later, laden down with gifts made by children and women supported by various fabulous NGOs and boarded a plane full of Chinese and South Korean tourists, I reflected on how much things had changed in the eight years since my last visit. I also felt a renewed sense of pride about the microfinance institutions we support through lendwithcare. The time I was lucky enough to spend with CCSF and their clients reminded me that despite a certain loss of faith by some in microfinance, there are a lot of really good providers of microfinance out there (even in saturated markets) and it is our duty to the poor, to make sure those good ones survive.

Lendwithcare entrepreneur, Sea, with her family
© CARE/Nancy Thomas

^{By Nancy Thomas, Lendwithcare.org Executive}

Every year lendwithcare visits each of its existing microfinance partners in country to monitor the progress of entrepreneurs funded through lendwithcare and to conduct an evaluation of the microfinance institution's (MFI) operations. This trip was part of our annual evaluation of our partner in Cambodia, CCSF.

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[1] http://www.phnompenhpost.com/2013013161092/Business/south-korea-leads-asia-s-big-three-as-cambodia-s-leading-investor.html

[2] http://cma-network.org/drupal/MicrofinanceEnvironment

Disability Loans- Assured Cash For Any Disabled Person

Are you a physically disabled being and are living on the benefit of DSS? Although it seems very simple for one to live on the benefits and obtain cash for all sorts of expenses and requirements but still there are numerous issues that comes to one's life that also needs to be solved. But if you fall short of funds in such situations then what else can you do other than pleading your friends for monetary help? But that too is not going to work any longer as the crisis do not come for once only and there are chances of it knocking at your gate repeatedly. So, in circumstances like those, you should be always prepared with loans like the disability loans that are being mainly meant for the disabled people only.

The disability loans do not turn downward any of the disabled people and anybody living on the benefit of the DSS can claim to obtain funds in it. Furthermore, there is no limitation among the borrowers in terms of the tribute scores as well. So, that means you will be considered as an eligible borrower even if your credit rating is very poor or bad. That indicates how friendly and helpful these loans are towards the disabled people. Some of the credit account that tags a person as a bad credit holder are Arrears, Late payment, Defaults, IVA, County Court Judgments, Bankruptcy or Skipping of installments.

The loans for disabled will not make you compromise on any of your monetary issues and paying off anything like your child's examination/tuition fee, car repairing, house installment, medical bill or electricity bill will get very simple for you. So, there are groups of benefits and advantages of opting for these loans which cannot be ignored by one at once.

Helping Hand For The Disabled People In Crisis

Loans for people disability are a very helpful and fastest way to obtain money at urgent times for all those people who are living on other benefits due to being mentally or physically disabled. With the assist of these loans disabled people can easily acquire sufficient amount of finances, for handling small cash desires within due time. Therefore, the mid month financial instability troubles can get easily settled on time without facing any compulsion!

By the help of these loans you can apply for a loan sum anywhere in between $100 to $1500. The borrowed loan total can be used to settle down many urgent moneyissues on time that may include-paying examination fees of your child, meeting unexpected medical expense, maintenance of car or computers, purchase of grocery for home, meeting small travel expenditure and other such short term emergency needs.

If you are looking out for a hassle free technique to apply for loans for people on disability, then online medium prefers to be the most excellent. Online application process is quite easy, fast, protected and reliable. A good research of the stiff online loan market may assist you to obtain efficient loan deal at inexpensive rates without doing much effort.

There are no complex formalities of document faxing and extensive paperwork indulged with loans for people on disability. Moreover, there is no connection of any credit check process. This makes bad credit containers qualified for the loan. Therefore, all your bad credit factors are completely adequate here. This means lenders don’t take much time in approving your loan and later the funds would be straightaway supplied in your bank account in a short period of time.

So, handle short term cash troubles on time with these loans despite being disabled and living on other benefits.