a short film about andrew's trip to malawi

You may remember back in April we waved goodbye to our Andrew and packed him off to Malawi to visit and help out at an innocent foundation project. Well as the culmination of his trip he has just finished editing a short film about his experience. And here it is. It's well worth watching to the very end if only to witness his unique dancing talents.

the last blog from malawi

Two weeks is up and I'm on my way back to the UK.

From seeing the great work the Microloan Foundation are doing to working with fledgling businesses and spending time with the warm, friendly Malawian people, it's been an incredible experience and I'm really grateful to have had this opportunity.

I spent my last few days visiting some newly established groups in Southern Malawi where the Microloan Foundation have recently set up new offices. It was good to compare this to the other groups I'd visited who have already been through more than one loan cycle.

The new groups had smaller businesses and were less diversified which is quite natural when you have less money to invest. What was constant in both new and established groups was the desire to earn a better living either for themselves and their families.

One business involved selling small quantities of beans, maize and cassava.

My favourite moments from the overall trip are far too many to list  but the laughter I got from trying to dance at Chigwirizano is definitely up there.

Both from me and the ladies.

Saying all this, it's not going to stop here. After an almost teary* goodbye to Alfred, we're going to speak regularly and make sure the juice business is on track against our plan. The next important step is to get accreditation from the Malawi Bureau of Standards so I spent Saturday reading through some rather dull paperwork and compiling a list of all the actions needed to get the factory in shape.

I'll keep you updated on progress over the coming months and there'll be a short video once I've had time to do my washing and take in the last couple of weeks.

Thanks so much for reading and for all tips people sent in about eating Marmite to ward of the mozzies - it worked a treat.

Andrew D

*me not him

football

I thought I'd bring some footballs over to Malawi as gifts to say thanks for having me to all the people I've met along the way.

I only had one left and as we were driving through a village, we spotted this group of kids who were playing with a ball made up from plastic bags. We gave them this one which caused loads of excitement.

They politely endured ten minutes of watching me painfully try to play and then got on with the game in hand.

All the parents of the village came out to say thank you and one of them turned out to be a lady we'd met on an irrigation project we'd visited earlier that day, which made it doubly special.

Lovely Malawian lady and me. The end of another great day.

Andrew D

those that do not love irrigation should not follow us

As I've previously mentioned, the innocent foundation support other projects in Malawi. These are mainly to do with irrigation, growing and juicing and yesterday, we visited the Michembo project which is an irrigation project close to the town of Salima.

We were greeeted by the ladies involved in the project singing "Those that do not love irrigation should not follow us". Again, this is the literal translation; it sounded much better when they sang it.

Here are the ladies singing in front of their field. Harvest has just finished which is why it looks rather bare. The trees you can see are mango trees which grow really well out here and help shade the maize crop from the hot sun.

With the expert guidance of Alfred, the Microloan Foundation has set up some very simple and sustainable methods to irrigate the land. The aim of is to increase the number of crops each villager can grow, meaning they can sell on the surplus for a profit.

Many of the projects surrounding this one were from larger donors and had fancy concrete irrigation channels. Alfred's idea was much simpler. He chose to use simple, V-shaped channels, shaped from soil and to bed each one with re-usable plastic sheets. The results have been similar to the bigger, fancier irrigation systems but the cost is much lower and the sheets are much easier for the villagers to mamage and replace as concrete channels tend to degrade with the heavy rains that come each year.

The ladies are now experimenting with new crops like mustard and lettuce. This is a picture of Alfred checking out the growing saplings.

The project was another example of the excellent work the Microloan Foundation is carrying out on the ground in Malawi. I interviewed the chairlady after this visit and she said that the project was not only helping to improve the lives of everyone involved but also helping push them towards self-sustainability by February 2009.

Which is superb stuff.

Andrew D

what we did at chigwirizano

The next step at Chigwirizano was to help push the production to even greater heights.

To do this, we set up the following agenda of what we wanted to achieve before leaving the co-op:

1. Get a brand for the product and get the ladies behind it.
2. Understand the prices in the local market and what price point matters to people.
3. Understand the costs of production (fruit, packaging, labour, fuel and distribution)
4. Come up with a business plan for the next few months and some sales targets.
5. Understand the barriers that may stop us from delivering the plan.

We actually did all of this in two days. Alfred was pretty chuffed although there is lots more to do to make sure that we get the business on track for growth. It's not huge volumes compared to innocent but it's big news here and that’s all that matters.

My favourite session was the brand decision. On Monday night, we asked each person in the group to think of a name that embodied the drinks we were making. Then on Tuesday afternoon, we chose our favourite - "Muli Madyo" which means "Full of Energy and Richness" *. Then, I gave out some paper and asked everyone to draw how they wanted the labels to look. A few designs really stood out so we tried to bring this together into a final label.

We voted for our favourite design using stones.

And this is what we came out with.

Not bad for word art.

The next steps are to print out some labels, follow up on the actions we decided on (like branding up some bicycles and cool boxes and sourcing cheaper bottles) and to get selling.

The key learning from me in this process was making sure we went through every step very clearly so that each of the clients understood what was needed to grow their business. I guess it was quite similar to what we do at innocent, just different for a developing market and for a really local part of Malawi.

Making notes.

At the end of the day we had to say goodbye to everyone which was sad as we needed to visit more of the Microloan projects and get together with the head office team to make sure our findings were clear and well documented. We bought some bottles of juice and headed off, after a lot of fond farewells.

Happy campers. Asumani, me and Fajamadi.

Before we left, there was just enough time for some local community radio PR about the juice factory and how amazing the product is.

Brilliant. I spoke in English while Alfred was all over the Chichewa.

Andrew D

*Apologies for my slightly rubbish translation.

the chigwirizano juice co-op

On Monday I spent the morning chatting to local shopkeepers about juice in the town of Kasungu. The general response was that people want healthy drinks and that most people don't know that concentrates aren't healthy for you.  There are loads of South African imported concentrated juices available already so I was hoping that with a bit of market analysis, I'd have a better idea of what price we could suggest for the juice once I got to Chigwirizano.

So, Alfred and I hopped in one of the Microloan cars and headed through a game reserve/jungle to get to the lakeside town of Nkhotakota. We took a turn off the main tarmac road and arrived at the Chigwirizano Juice Co-op.

After a week of research, this was one of the main reasons I was here. Again, we were greeted with lots of singing and general happiness and, without sounding too gushing, it was a sight something everyone at innocent and all our drinkers should be pretty proud of.

After introductions, I told the ladies there all about innocent. That AGM booklet I'd nabbed before leaving has been so useful to explain to people here about what we do (you can have a look for yourself here)

Team Chigwirizano.

We then had a tour round the old juice factory and the new factory, which has been built through MicroVentures. Some of the money for this new factory was donated by the innocent foundation. MicroVentures is part of the Microloan Foundation and helps people with bigger projects or projects that require more capital to start (for example, beehives and sewing). It was really great to see something clearly tangible as a result of the funding. The new factory has a tin roof which means it’s a lot less dusty and the floors are of a much better quality of compressed concrete which makes it much easier to clean and therefore more hygienic.

The new factory is on the left. The old one will be used for material storage, change rooms and some knitting training.

The ladies had prepared a load of Bwemba and Malambe fruit for us so we walked through the process from start to finish. It was quite similar to the process I had seen before with a few minor tweaks. I'd never seen Bwemba before. Again, it is a crop that is grows in abundance in the local area. As well as the loan from MLF, the co-operative have also been trained for free in good juice making practice by a government agricultural department team. Everyone wears hair nets and aprons but with my fat head, I had to settle for this rather fetching scarf instead.

Crushing and squeezing the juice pulp from the stones. Here we are making Bwemba.

The tour made it very clear that capacity wasn't the issue to increasing the sales. They can make a lot more juice than they are currently making so we needed to come up with a few new plans for the business. Before doing that though, I shared a few of the learnings I had picked up in the last week.

One of the items that got everyone really excited was the Baobab jam I had picked up in a small refinery in Blantyre. This is made from the seeds of the Baobab and is therefore another useful side product that could be sold within the co-op. I bought a jar for my mum but everyone wanted to try it so out came the spoon and the chairman of the group dished us all out a huge clump (sorry, Mum). It was pretty funny watching everyone getting involved in the jam and lead to even more singing. You'll have to wait for the video for that.

I also picked up a few mini plastic bags from a bottle supplier I met when I was down in Blantyre. I thought might serve as an alternative to plastic bottles as bottles are expensive and not in regular supply. So, we packed juice into these bags for the first time ever and will be running a trial this week in the market to see if they take off.

Not quite the high tech filling machines we have in our factories but just as effective. Here's the juice being poured into the new bags.

More updates in my next blog.

Andrew D

i can deal with the pigs and the hares but the jackels and the leopards...

Saw this sign on a trail over the weekend. It was in the amazing Luwawa forest where I stayed in a bunk at this lodge.

Thankfully, I had the lodge dogs to protect me.

charles

This is Charles Hussain.

Charles is the chairman of the Chigwirizano juice co-op. This is quite unusual for Microloan projects as the Foundation tends to only work with women and Charles is quite clearly a fine figure of man. He got involved in the project because his wife is in the loan group and thought he could help. Charles' story is typical of many people in Malawi. His parents couldn't afford to keep him in school so he had to leave early and work on the land.

Charles has been a great source of information and help in the business planning process and has had some brilliant ideas, especially around the cooling of the product as we have no electricty or fridges at the factory. He also has great business awareness; for example, he sorted out the PR in the next blog. He's one example of the countless other people who are touched by Microloan's work. Since Charles is not directly a loan recipient, he works on the project in his spare time, juggling this with his six kids and farming. It's been so good to meet him and share in his passion for juice as well as meeting yet another hardcore fan of flowery shirts.

Andrew D

visiting an MLF loan group

On Friday we went out with Alfred and one of the loan officers, Marknevius, to the "Titikuke" group. This means "Let us Develop" in Malawian and is typical of the type of group that the Microloan Foundation works with.

We arrived in the village to lots of singing which made me feel incredibly welcome.

Here is a picture of the ladies who all took time out of their businesses to be there to meet me.

First of all we explained where I was from and all about innocent and the innocent foundation. Then, I wanted to find out all about the ladies' different businesses and how the MLF had impacted on their lives. We filmed everything (with their consent) so hopefully I'll be able to get it up on the blog when I get back.

In the mean time, here's a few examples of what some of these ladies do:

Sophlet - Runs a second hand clothes business as well as buying and selling tobacco.
Tocozani - Buys and sells fresh fish from Lake Malawi (about 100km away).
Batoma - Has a grocery shop mainly selling soap and detergent as well as other items.
Gertrude - Has a small restaurant in the middle of Kasungu.
Regine - Buys tomatoes, onions and beans in a market 90km away and sells them in Kasungu.

All of these women will be running these businesses on top of harvesting the land that will feed them and their families. The loans have helped them go into new things or develop their existing businesses which brings extra income into their families. Apart from the obvious benefits, one of the woman, Ester, mentioned how she has now been able to buy a bed rather than sleeping on the floor. Emy told us about how she has been able to buy her own plot of land to build a house for her family.

By starting their own businesses, these women have more diversified incomes which helps protect them if the harvest is bad or extra, unexpected income is needed, for say, medical expenses or funerals.

I haven't talked about it much but Malawi has a terrible HIV/AIDS problem with over 14% of the population affected. The woman also talked about how they need to support orphans that are often left behind when their parents die. When you consider these types of difficulties, along with the natural risk that a maize crop might fail on top of the extra responsibilities of running their own businesses, it is clear that these woman want to get out of the poverty trap and are doing everything they possibly can to do so.

I really felt that I could see the benefit the Microloan Foundation was having on these woman and it was brilliant to meet all of them.

At the end I was quite sad to go - it was awesome to see all these happy faces.

Andrew D

how does microloan work?

On Friday I went into the MLF Malawi head office in a town called Kasungu. Alfred gave me a quick tour of the office and I met all the lovely support staff. He then helped answer all my questions about how the MLF works here in Malawi. You can find out loads more on the website but here is a simple version for people who can only browse the innocent blog.

Lets start with the mission.

The mission of MLF is to significantly reduce the depth and breadth of poverty in the communities in which it operates. It does this by lending money to groups of women to help them build sustainable businesses and by providing meaningful training and ongoing mentoring support. It focuses on women primarily because they have fewer opportunities and because the men (I'm allowed to say this because I am one) aren't as good at saving for their families, especially their children.

Why lend money?

Very simply, helping the poor get out of poverty through their own efforts is likely to be more sustainable than handouts.

The other thing to note here is that banks generally won't lend to anyone who doesn't have collateral so immediately this puts a huge majority of Malawians outside of the normal financial system.

So how does MLF work?

1. MLF have offices in 15 of the 26 districts in Malawi*. They have a huge list of clients in each of these districts but are always looking for new people to help. To do this, they go into rural villages and explain about how the MLF system works, the structure of the loans and benefits of the program. One loan officer from the MLF looks after 10-15 groups of ladies. Each loan officer reports into a branch manager who then reports into the support team in the head office.

2. Women who are interested in receiving a loan must then form groups by themselves and gain the village elders' approval, before coming back with their proposals. The groups are generally made up of 15-20 women and the money is loaned to the collective of all of those people.  By taking the loan as a group, all members have to support each other in the repayment and also have to work together rather than starting businesses that compete with each other.

3. Once the application is received, MLF organise a training session to explain in more detail about how everything works. Not everyone can read so it's really important that the rules are clear before the loan starts to avoid problems later on. The training also covers the basics in business, including feasibility and market research as well as how all the Microloan paperwork works.

4. Following this, the ladies then all submit their joint loan application. This gets checked by the Branch Manager and the loan is then approved. The loan is then disbursed so that it can be used according to each business plan of the individuals in the group. Then, every two weeks, the group meets with the loan officer from the MLF to see how things are going. Depending on the setup of the loan, repayments will start after a few weeks and will generally payback within 4-6 months. If people are late with the payments, it is noted but the repayments don't increase and everyone gets together to understand why and how they can get back on track. As the loans are all paid back, the money is available for another set of people (or the same people again for another round). Interest is paid on the loan this helps towards growing the total pot of money available for others, and also helps to pay for the support team who provide the training and manage all the financial paperwork and systems.

So hope that explains things a little better. Please do read more on the website of the MLF - Microcredit is such an interesting area and has been around for ages. One of the pioneers of it is a super intelligent man called Muhammed Yunus who setup one of the first micro-credit instituitions  called the Grameen ("Village") Bank in Bangladesh. The bank is owned by the 7 million people who it lends to. The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded in 1996 to both Mr. Yunus and all the people who own his bank for its innovative approaches to poverty reduction.

Pretty inspiring stuff if you ask me.

Sorry there aren't any pictures in this blog but hopefully, it was worth the read.

Andrew D

* They're expanding all the time with 2 new districts this year. What's great is that there is scope to keep growing and helping more people.