Daiki "Taji" Tajima

Location / Country: Kigali, Rwanda
Organization: Africa Entrepreneurship Collective

SONG: "This summer, I did my summer internship at African Entrepreneur Collective (AEC). AEC is an American NGO which supports entrepreneurs in Rwanda and Tanzania. AEC was founded by Ms. Julienne Oyler (CEO, Yale MBA) and Ms. Sara Leedom (COO, Oxford MBA) in 2012. Under AEC’s umbrella, there are three organizations; Inkomoko, the affiliate for providing business consulting in Rwanda, AEC Rwanda Trustee, which provides low-cost loans to entrepreneurs by collaboration with KIVA, and Anza, the affiliate for providing business consulting in Tanzania. Strictly speaking, I did my summer internship at Inkomoko among these three organizations.”

“Supporting entrepreneurs in Rwanda has three different stages. For the first stage, AEC/Inkomoko staffs provide workshops for training basic business skills such as setting vision, mission and goals, building effective team, and basic accounting. During the first stage, AEC/Inkomoko staffs also conducts initial meetings with the clients. For the second stage, AEC/Inkomoko staffs analyze the business of entrepreneurs in terms of sales and marketing, operation, people, finance and accounting. During the second stage, AEC/Inkomoko staffs also deliver the business assessment reports with recommendations to the clients. For the third stage, AEC/Inkomoko staffs set the priority of the consulting service based on the feedbacks from the clients. During the third stage, AEC/Inkomoko staffs also provide actual consulting services such as developing market strategies, making financial projections in order to get external funding from banks, providing advanced accounting workshops, etc. As a summer internship member, I mainly involved in the second stage, i.e. delivering the business assessment reports. “

Responsibilities & Accomplishments

“I was in charge of supporting four Rwandan entrepreneurs. The entrepreneurs are chosen by Bank of Kigali’s entrepreneurship support project. Under this project, the eight winners among fifty entrepreneurs will be provided the interest-free loans by Bank of Kigali.”

“Although there are many challenges for entrepreneurs in Africa, international organization, governments, and private companies are cooperating each other to unlock the great potential of entrepreneurs in Africa in order to create more jobs and achieve sustainable development of the continent.”

__

Conclusion

“My summer internship at African Entrepreneur Collective (AEC) / Inkomoko was an amazing experience for me. I learned a lot from the NGO and people in Rwanda but at the same time I tried to do my best for contributing through supporting clients of AEC through business assessment reports, providing internal training about Japanese economic growth and developing networks with IFC and JICA. I would like to contribute more to the beautiful country, Rwanda, as wells as the amazing African continent after graduating from Fletcher.”

Marli Kasdan

Location / Country: Kigali, Rwanda
Organization: Hands of Mothers

Kasdan: "Overall, my internship experience with Hands of Mothers (HOM) was extremely rewarding for me. I learned a lot about development at the local level though the lenses of women’s empowerment in business, capacity building, and project sustainability. In addition, I feel that my work with HOM centered on deliverables and impact to our program participants. I thoroughly enjoyed working with the three cooperatives that HOM supports: Twiyubake, Baho, and Ejo Hazaza. I appreciate and recognize the many challenges they face, and I think that the HOM summer team was able to lay the groundwork for a sustained upward trajectory for each cooperative. My hope is that our team’s focus on capacity building through a series of trainings and workshops and our emphasis on promoting sustainable income generation has put in place the foundation for each cooperative to become independent from HOM and sustainable in the long run.”

__

Hands of Mothers

“HOM worked with three women’s cooperatives in Kigali, Rwanda:

• Baho: raises kuroiler hens and sells eggs

• Twiyubake: makes hand-crafted leather sandals

• Ejo Hazaza: makes hand-crafted jewelry; applied for a grant to start a project to grow and sell oyster mushrooms”

__

Deliverables and Impact to Program Participants

“During the internship, my deliverables and impact on program participants mainly focused on my work with the women in the cooperatives that HOM supports. Throughout the summer I ran a series of trainings and workshops along with my team members in order to help the women in the cooperatives improve their record keeping skills, sales skills, cooperative management and organization, and cooperative accountability structure. “

__

Conclusion

“I thoroughly enjoyed my internship experience with Hands of Mothers in Kigali this summer, and I hope that I had a positive impact on the women we worked with and HOM. I gained valuable field work experience this summer, and I want to extend my most sincere thank you to Jerry and Yunie Blakeley for the fellowship.”

Claudia Cruz Leo

Location / Country: Hyderabad, India
Organization: Vaya

CLAUDIA CRUZ LEO: "Vaya is a for-profit microfinance institution (MFI) based in Hyderabad, India, the capital of the Indian state of Telangana. The organization is the brainchild of former SKS Microfinance1 CEO and Tufts alumnus, Dr. Vikram Akula, who now serves as Chairperson for the organization and is a constant source of guidance and inspiration for Vaya staff. Vaya sees itself as “a next- generation financial inclusion organization”, as it provides financial services with a focus on integrating digital finance technology through the use of tablets for loan management.2 The firm’s aim is to enhance the livelihoods of underserved low-income women, mainly in rural areas, through the provision of financial services and financial literacy training. Vaya is operational in six states in India and is currently the only microfinance firm present in Telangana following the Andhra Pradesh crisis in 2010.

Throughout my nine weeks at Vaya my focus was on individual lending. Being a traditional microfinance firm, Vaya currently only offers group lending, or joint liability, products. After an initial discussion over Skype with the organization’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO), I realized individual lending would be a priority area for the organization. This hunch was confirmed after I arrived in Hyderabad, following an annual all-staff retreat in which senior management stressed that the organization going forward would begin to transition into individual lending.

My direct supervisor and I developed a work plan with three goals for the summer:

1. Investigate individual lending products and underwriting practices in India and around the world;

2. Design a survey to administer in the field and gain a solid understanding of the demand for individual lending products;

3. Recommend entry or delay into the individual lending market and propose a road map for next steps.

“In addition to conducting independent research, I worked closely with various department heads at Vaya (operations, finance, training, data management, and human resources). I made two visits to the field to speak with and understand the composition and needs of Vaya clients and staff. I also spoke with key staff members at competing microfinance organizations, e.g. Ujjivan Financial Services, Muthoot FinCorp, and others, to understand the approaches others in the industry were taking towards individual lending. My final recommendation was based on the Indian context with regard to individual lending (products and process); client demand; and the firm’s level of readiness.

Apart from this main research effort and market analysis, I also helped Vaya staff begin to think through how to design a credit absorption index to assess new clients’ creditworthiness, although this work was preliminary. “

IMPACT:

i. Vaya’s Staff

Vaya’s CEO was very thankful for my efforts in helping the organization move one step closer to cracking the individual lending puzzle. My research, which combined an academic and fieldwork approach, provided the organization with the groundwork and tools for conceptualizing an individual lending product and the new underwriting process. This is something for which the organization did not have the resources, human and financial, to do carry out on its own.

ii. Vaya’s Clients

Various colleagues at Vaya told me in my first days at the organization that their clients had been clamoring for individual loan products. Many of these women had already successfully completed various loan cycles with Vaya and other microfinance organizations, reaching the maximum amount they could borrow at one time under RBI regulations, and therefore wanted expanded opportunities to access larger chunks of capital to grow their businesses. I spoke to women who felt this way on my field visits. Others, interestingly enough, no longer wanted to be responsible for other group members’ repayments. The recent demonetization effort further exacerbated this issue as many women were unable to meet their repayment schedules, putting undue pressure on their peers to meet their repayment obligations. Although my ultimate recommendation was to delay the launch of individual lending products, I emphasized the need for the organization to put in place the necessary processes and seek the needed expertise to meet these women’s needs.

Liz Henry

Country: Ecuador
Organization: Root Capital

Liz Henry was assigned by Root Capital’s office in Lima, Peru to investigate and formulate a plan for expanding its loan activity into Ecuador. Using her Spanish language she was able to engage with diverse stakeholders, include personnel international: agencies such as USAID and NGOs such as Catholic Relief Services, directors at the Inter-American Development Bank, representatives from commodity trading firms, employees and consultants at Ecuadorian government ministries, CEOs of SMEs and rural cacao and coffee farmers.

Liz: “Working for Root Capital in Ecuador was a perfect fit for my Blakeley Fellowship. I now recognize the crucial role of the agricultural sector and SMEs within development, as well as the importance of promoting access to finance for such businesses.”

Bernardo Goriupp

Country: Uganda

Organization: MAPLE (Microdevelopment for the Alleviation of Poverty through Learning and Entrepreneurship), an Oregon based NGO operating in Uganda

Bernardo Goriupp worked as Project Manager, responsible for design to implementation of a small scale fish farm. This included everything from technical and business modeling to investigating potential sources of funding to developing a business plan to be used for grant applications and for expansion.

“What makes me proud is that I left behind something that did not exist before… it may well be one the the things of greatest significance I have ever done. The whole experience was also very useful in serving my own careet objectives. I have a profound interest in the synergies between development objectives and business, in particular the role that the private sector can undertake to promote sustainable and long-lasting social progress.”

— Bernardo

Shailee

Country: Malawi

Shailee set up programs with C-FISH to provide access to credit and training for best aquaculture practices. Conducted a baseline survey for MicroLoan Foundation (MLF) to evaluate the impact of their micro-loans in agrarian communities lacking capital and technology., enabling MLF to better understand the needs of their clients.