Our first week at MLF

Micro Loan Foundation (MLF)
We thought a brief desciption of MLF would be helpful at this stage.The foundation lends small sums of money to women to start small businesses. The aim of the scheme is to help lift the poorest women and their families out of poverty and, at certain times of the year, prevent starvation. It is very well organised. The loans are made to groups of up 20 women who have collective responsibilty for repaying them. The businesses are usually linked to farming produce but also include things like dealing second hand clothing or shoes, brewing beer. The women are provided with training and support to run their businesses and manage the money. They pay back the money over four months with interest, and in addition also usually save some money towards future ventures. Many women are on their 8th, 9th, or 10th cycle of loans as they successfully progress. MLF also has a smaller, but also successful, micro ventures programme funded by lottery money whereby groups of women run larger projects such as irrigation schemes, poultry farming, honey production, knitting or sewing businesses. In these circumstances the women are provided with equipment or machinery as well as the loans.
Jane's work, with Ken as assistant and driver (he's too modest he's doing a lot more than that!), is to start the work of demonstrating how MLF benefits the children of the women who obtain the loans. This work can be used to raise more money to extend the MLF work. MLF already have nearly 700 groups of women across the country currently using loans, so over 10,000 women are benefiting from its work.
MLF employs only Malawian people to manage and run the programmes, and it is professionally and efficiently managed with good infrastructure which copes amazingly with the frequent absence of electricity and water.
Living and working in Kasungu.
Our first day with MLF was a great successs. The offices were well equipped, smart, and in a modern compound. The staff at the HQ office were great. They were prepared for us and gave us an excellent induction, ending up in the afternoon with a visit to one of the groups of women who were paying back their loan to the scheme. We were taken for an hour's drive into the countryside to meet with the group. What an experience! The women, about twenty of them, were waiting for us and sang and danced to us in greeting. We were taken into a small hut for the meeting, and they cheered and clapped as Jane's introduction was interpreted by the loans officer from the scheme who took us there. The meeting was really impressive. The women jointly put together the money to repay that instalment of their loan. The women showed a high level of support to each other in the meeting. At the end of the meeeting, one of the elders gave a little speech saying how pleased and honoured they were that we visited them and they sang for us again. As we left one of the women felt Ken's hair, to the great amusement of the rest, and they sang and danced again as we drove away. Wow!
We have moved into a guesthouse with self contained acccommodation, a large bedroom, and the services include a cook and a daily laundry service all for half the cost of the town's only hotel.

Insert pictures

Although finding produce in Kasungu is not easy, the cook, a young man called Able, manages to produce excellent meals from the indgredients we buy. There are frequent power cuts and water shortages and on a daily basis, which is at present a problem all over Malawi. Fortunately the office has it's own generator, so it doesn't affect our work. The evenings are often a bit strange with no light to read, no TV or radio and nowhere much to go out to. All houses have compounds with high walls, large steel gates and a nightwatchman/guard, so we feel pretty secure. We have been allocated a car to use which will make it possible to vist the branches around the country and the groups of women we will need to talk to and interview. We can also use the car to travel about in Malawi which will be a great benefit.