Hey FACE AIDSers!

I’m writing from Kirehe, where I’ve been living for almost four months now and working as FACE AIDS Program Associate. A large part of my work this year is to help transition our HIV associations to independence. Currently, FACE AIDS works with three HIV associations: groups of HIV-affected people who have come together to support each other. FACE AIDS supports these associations through income generation activities; we pay small salaries to our association members for making the beaded AIDS pins you sell on your campuses! The first association visit I made was to distribute beads and string for the making of the pins. This was particularly exciting for me because I have been selling FACE AIDS pins since high school and was now able to see exactly where they came from!

In conjunction with the pin-making cycles, we have also helped these associations establish rotating savings and credit cooperatives that act like community banks. Association members pay into a general fund that they then lend out to individual association members for emergency expenses or business investments. Over the course of this year we are hoping to provide enough training and support that these savings cooperatives will function smoothly without our oversight and our associations will no longer need our organizational support. As part of this process, we delivered small business trainings to our associations in December. Many of the association members have small businesses that range from growing and selling crops to making banana juice to being tailors. The associations requested a training that would help them improve, or expand their small businesses, and since we feel like economic empowerment is an important part of fighting HIV, we were happy to oblige!

For the small business trainings, we utilized a small business training curriculum developed by Barefoot MBA, an NGO whose mission it is to “provide people with the knowledge they need to make better business decisions.” Barefoot MBA has developed training modules that cover a variety of basic business concepts, from saving and spending to cost-benefit analysis and planning and records. The modules are meant to be applicable to small business owners across the globe. Our friends at Gardens for Health International in Ndera, Rwanda had already adapted their lessons to a Rwandan context, and translated the curriculum into Kinyarwanda! After talking to our associations we decided which topics would be most useful to them and headed out in the field to get started with trainings.

Our program assistants, Bosco and Theo, did an amazing job delivering the trainings. They are both small business owners themselves and were even able to weave personal experiences into the lessons to make it that much more engaging. We spent two days with each association, covering basic business concepts and prompting discussion around various business scenarios.

The highlight of the trainings for me was watching our association members do an activity that was meant to demonstrate the different types of investment one could make, the advantages and disadvantages to different types of investment, and the risk involved in investing. The activity was essentially a role-play where different members were assigned different products to buy at the market and then we charted their appreciation in value over time on the white board. One association in particular got really into the role play and members were bartering at the “market,” and introducing new factors into the investing scenarios that affected their decisions to buy and sell! I was so excited to see them take the activity and run with it!

Getting positive feedback after the training from association members was also really gratifying. One association member told us that she had never thought about investing her money before and was going to start investing her profit so she could see it grow! Another member told us that she was going to start using the business ledger we showed them to keep track of her profit and loss and be able to know what kinds of sales and expenses she could expect in coming months.

The main frustration of the training was feeling like we did not have enough time to go into depth on many of the topics we introduced. Ideally, we would have more time address more individualized concerns of each association member and tailor our trainings to their specific needs. In order to address this concern, we are going to check in with the association members to help them set goals for their businesses and set up small working groups that will hold each other accountable for these goals.

Next steps to take with our associations will be working with them on their governance to make sure they have strong mechanisms for accounting in place and everyone is clear on their role and the roles of the committee members. In general, working with the associations has been my favorite part of the job! It’s inspiring to see the ways in which members of our oldest association, Rwandarera, have come together to support each other and see what they’ve been able to achieve collectively. Together they have invested in cassava fields as well as livestock that help support them and their families. At meetings with them, it is clear they are a second family to each other. We hope that through small business trainings and other efforts to strengthen our associations, that they can all achieve this level of independence and success and be a strong source of support for each member, even after FACE AIDS’ fiscal support is complete.

–Madden

While microfinance programs have long targeted female clients because of the associated positive impacts seen in their children’s health and education (as well as other benefits), should microsavings programs also make targeting female clients an express part of their missions?  David Roodman of the Center for Global Development writes an interesting summary of a study measuring the impacts of microsavings that was conducted in Kenya and Uganda.  I found the gender differences in use of savings and subsequent impact on business growth particularly fascinating.  

“First Randomized Trial of Microsavings” (David Roodman)

What do you think?

Hey again!  For anyone interested in or curious about our focus on savings programs, in which members of our partner associations learn about and encourage each other to save very small amounts each month (usually approximately $1-2 per person), check out these articles about the importance of “microsavings.”  Once seen as merely a side-effect of microfinance, experts now consider community-based microsaving to be one of the simplest and most effective ways to help increase financial stability among the poor.   

Putting the Microsavings in Microfinance (Nicholas Kristof)

A Better Mattress: Microfinance focuses on lending. Now the industry is turning to deposits. (The Economist) 

Thanks to John Thomas for sending these articles along to me!

Day 8: December 26

By Austin Keeley, Stanford University

The morning after Christmas we awoke late, piled into our trusty van, and began the drive out of Rwinkwavu towards Kirehe. Driving out of the valley for the last time left me with a strange feeling. Though I had only spent a few days there, I had grown quite fond of Rwinkwavu and the people there, and was sad to leave. Still, I was excited for the day ahead. We were set to visit the hospital at Kirehe, have a formalized talk with John and François, and have our first homestays.

Upon arriving in Kirehe, Claire gave us a tour of the PIH supported hospital there. Strikingly different from Rwinkwavu, the hospital was located on a main road and much more easily accessible by van. The hospital was one of the few buildings outside of Kigali that was two stories tall. Construction was currently working erecting a new surgery facility.

After completing the tour we had lunch and headed back to Claire’s place to meet with John and François, our FACE AIDS Program Assistants. We’d had the pleasure of John and François’ company at different points throughout the trip, but it was incredible to talk with them about their own stories, their plans for the future, and their vision for FACE AIDS.

John and François are a part of PIH’s School Fees Program. After completing secondary school they scored so high on the standardized test score that they received government scholarships to attend university. Still, the government scholarship doesn’t cover the outside costs of living at university. This is where FACE AIDS came in; they decided to support both John and François through college. After working with FACE AIDS for several months, they are set to head out to university in January. They are two remarkably inspirational men whom I am so happy to count among my friends. Best of luck John and François!

We were well into the afternoon by this point, and once again found ourselves in the car. The drive was much shorter than the morning’s ride as we headed off road to a small village near the Kirehe hospital. We were set to meet the Rwanderera Association, the first ever pin-making association for FACE AIDS! It was an exciting moment when we pulled up and the smiling faces that greeted us were faces we had seen before on pin cards.

After introductions and learning about how the structured savings program has helped the members of Rwanderea expand their farming production of cassava from one to three fields, we headed into the fields themselves to see how the crop was produced.

The trek eventually led us to the home of Marie, our host for the evening. We dined with our new friends, played with the kids, and sat watching the beautiful sunset over the hills.

Just before the sunset we divided up and headed out to our different homestays. This was one of the parts of the trip that I had been most looking forward to. Steven, John, and I stayed with Marie and her family. After dinner we sang, dances, and showed our gratitude through a series of smiles and nods. Around 9 we headed to bed and settled in for a good night’s sleep after a long day.