Friday, June 17th, 2011
Sorry for the late posts! I have been so busy with work and play that I had yet to have a minute on the internet to post!
I returned from Lilongwe Thursday afternoon with Gerald! Had another great experience using the busses to and from Lilongwe and Kasungu!
On Wednesday we had a meeting regarding the grant MicroLoan Foundation was awarded through FICA (Flemish International Cooperation Agency). FICA is committed to achieving the United Nations millennium development goals to put an end to poverty by 2015. They are active in Southern Africa and its partner countries are South Africa, Mozambique, and Malawi. FICA works with local authorities, but also with indirect actors such as NGOs, research institutes, and multilateral organizations, like MicroLoan Foundation!
MicroLoan was awarded the money through FICA to create opportunities for client farmer groups to supply produce to wholesalers and retailers! The project is over a three year period and focuses in four main areas. (1) Providing access to wholesale markets, (2) Ongoing training for existing groups to upgrade their skills, (3) Providing loans for farming input, and (4) Accessing better quality inputs and the benefits of bulk purchasing!
The meeting on Wednesday was with some individuals who work for BIF (The Business Innovation Facility). They are supporting our project with complimentary technical assistance, helping MicroLoan assess value chain and options for market linkages between smallholder farmers and retailers, wholesalers, and processors. They are also helping us develop a business plan for a viable enterprise providing market intermediary services.
The value chain analysis is taking place next week with Georgina and her translator Mike. Gerald and I were both invited to come along and assist! I am so excited to take part in this process! We will be visiting three districts over the course of five days. In Lilongwe we will be conducting interviews with processors and retailers. Included in the list is PTC, Shoprite, Sunbird, Wilderness, Spar, Foodworths, Ulendo, Sana, and Ex-Agris. In Mzuzu we will conduct interviews with traders, ago dealers, and market vendors. And in Jenda we will interview traders, ago dealers, market vendors, and MicroLoan farming clients as well as other non-MicroLoan farming clients!
At the meeting we also developed a viable business plan with the help of BIF. It was a really interesting process as we took part in a baseline evaluation of the plan and would do the same at the conclusion of the three year project in order to see the results. We constructed a flow chart with what the initial steps would be to get the enterprise off the ground and then concluded with what we wanted the ending results of the project to look like! It was really eye opening taking part in something like this!
At the end of the meeting I told Georgina and Karen that I was staying at Mabuya! They told me to look out for a young guy, Andy, from the UK who was involved with another project BIF was supporting! When I sat down for dinner, I saw a guy sitting by himself and asked if he was Andy! He said, "yeah, how did you know?" So I explained how Karen and Georgina told me about him and that we should speak as we were both working on agriculture related projects in Malawi! He is working on his masters in environmental technology and is studying a start up company in Malawi, AfrNut! We spoke about our interests and travel around Malawi. He told me about how him and his brother biked from Malawi to Tanzania a few years ago and shared with me his entire experience and all the places he stayed!
I also met a great American couple from Oregon who have been traveling Southern Africa for the past two months and were finishing their journey in Malawi! They plan on volunteering at a primary school for the next month! They had so many great stories of their experiences thus far that they shared with me! They told me about their near death experience camping in a national park in Zambia where an elephant was sniffing their tent in search of food and they awoke at 4:00 AM to their guide screaming "don't move." If they startled the elephant they could have been trampled!
Have a nice relaxing, long weekend planned! Stay connected!
Love
Jimmy
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