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Stories tagged with Salone Microfinance Trust
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Micaela Browning | KF17/18 | Sierra Leone
This post has a long-ish preamble before I get down to the real moral. Bear with me for just a little bit.
Let’s face it: If you are a foreigner in rural Sierra Leone during the rainy season, you will invariably find yourself engaged in a game of what my friend Ryan once referred to as Tropical Disease Roulette. While you may be unsure whether the bullet contains typhoid, malaria, or the alphabet soup of the hepatitises, you can be absolutely certain that – probably sooner rather than later – you are going to come...
Continue Reading >>Eric Rindal – KF16 – Bolivia
After Jeffrey Sachs started talking about ladders, rungs, and poverty, many wondered if there would be an end to poverty. The way he saw it was that if a developing country could just make it to that first “rung” on the ladder, they would reach the global economy and lift themselves from poverty. He augmented this with “clinical economics,” treating developing countries like patients by offering a unique diagnosis, by properly addressing a country’s need. I am not going to analyze Sachs’ book, rather I will compare the differences...
Continue Reading >>By Eric Rindal – Sierra Leone – KF15
I am writing this blog by hand today as I sit at my desk in Makeni, Sierra Leone. There is no power for the whole office. When I ask, “isn’t there National Power from the grid?” people just laugh (it only comes on at night for a few hours). When I ask, “What about the generator?” people just shrug (it runs on petrol). The town is actually out of petrol on this cloud-tumbling Monday morning. With finicky fuel costs, scarcity of fuel, and an inflation rate of 17.7% there are many reasons for days like this. The MFI (Microfinance...
Continue Reading >>by Eric Rindal – KF15 – Sierra Leone
“What has changed in your business since you took out your loan?” I ask Kiva borrower Fatmata as we stand amongst the whirling crowd in a Freetown market. “Oh, very much, everything has changed,” she says as her eyes quickly sway toward the crowd, then back to mine. I ask her to be more specific; she picks up some of her merchandise and slaps it down with a smile, “I can pay for my child’s school fees.
I have one, a girl, who is in her last year of schooling.” Her pending graduation is quite an accomplishment in a...
Continue Reading >>by Stephanie Meyer, KF9, Sierra Leone
I first met Santos through a mutual friend of ours, Dan, who is here in Makeni working at the orthopedic clinic in town (almost exclusively with amputees). Like many of the adult amputees here in Sierra Leone, Santos has a harrowing war-story to tell that reads like something straight out of the film “Blood Diamond”. This is not what is striking about him, however.
What is amazing about Santos is his ability to thrive. He lives just outside Makeni in the Oslo Amputee Settlement. Oslo...
Continue Reading >>by Stephanie Meyer, KF9, Sierra Leone
I eat at Kumba’s at least three times a week. I’ve always been the type that likes to have my “regular spots” – my coffee shop, my bar, my newsstand. I like to think of Kumba’s as my lunch spot. It doesn’t hurt that everything is so homey. There are only three tables, so people tend to share and chat. By the time I had made three visits, I was granted to privilege of walking through the door to “Eh! Step-nie!” followed by enquiries after the folks I usually eat with and their whereabouts. The food is tasty and...
Continue Reading >>By Ibrahim Oumarr Jalloh, Kiva Coordinator, Salone Microfinance Trust, Sierra Leone
There is a lot of wealth at the top of a palm-tree. Many would like to reap the benefits it possesses.
The palm-wine taper wants the palm-wine, the palm-oil producer wants the palm-oil, the mats designers and broom makers want the palm-leaves – even the snakes and rats want to feed from the palm fruits.
There are no rules about who is allowed to try to climb and reach the top of the palm tree to get what they want, but it is clear,...
Continue Reading >>By Adam Grenier, KF6 Sierra Leone
In May 2008, Salone Microfinance Trust (SMT) launched an agricultural loan product to clients in the remote farming villages surrounding the city of Kabala, Sierra Leone. The agricultural loan product is designed to stimulate the agribusiness sector. The loan provides subsistence farmers with a capital infusion into their farms for the purpose of increasing their production. Most commonly, the capital is used to purchase seeds, fertilizer and labor. These are the inputs, so to speak. With more inputs,...
Continue Reading >>By Adam Grenier, KF6 Sierra Leone
Excerpt from recent conversation with Archibald Shodeke, Finance Manager, SMT:
Archibald: “Would...
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