I did as suggested (thanks, Henry the Bold!
) and wrote to the two MFIs of my long-undisbursed loans, asking if they could tell me if there was any problem with the client, or with the area in which they live. (I noticed that there are about 10 undisbursed loans to clients in Agsu, Azerbaijan right now, so maybe there's something going on in that part of the world that I haven't heard about -- wouldn't be the first time! -- or perhaps the Agsu rep is ill or away.) Overnight, I received this lovely email response from Irene Kamau at Action Now: Kenya, concerning
Ndumi Mutua's loan:
Dear Diane,
Thank you for writing to us, and it is always a pleasure for us to give any information with regard to any of our clients.
With regard to the loan for Ndumi Mutua, we wish to inform you that we have actually began to make the purchases for the cloth materials that she had requested. Within Action Now Kenya, we have a system that we use, whereby once we draw a profile for any business, we put it on a queue to raise funds. When the funds are raised, we only receive them once during the beginning of the following month, when the funds are sent to us from Kiva. (Currently we are still trying to raise a reserve that will enable us to be able to disburse loans to businesses immediately they raise funds on the website, but that is still underway.) We therefore received the funds for this business during the first week of July 2007. Once the funds are raised, we go back to the initial queue, and we begin to disburse the loans in the order of the queue. For our loan disbursements, we usually do not just give the cash directly. We usually give the loans in kind. Therefore, we get the ANK official in charge of that business to call up the client, and to make an appointment when they are ready to go and buy the items requested. The ANK staff together with the client then go out to the shops or market (based on the choice of the client) to buy whatever items. In this case, For Ndumi we are buying an assortment of tailoring materials. Sometimes it takes some time to find all the materials that the client requires, all at once. (Hence for this case we are now on the third day today.) This means that in some cases, the purchase can take a few days to be completed, unlike in a case where the item being bought is just one item like a freezer. Once all the purchases are done, we then go to the website and mark the loan as disbursed.
I hope this keeps you in light of the situation with regard to the loan for Ndumi. I therefore wish to assure you that there is nothing to worry about, since we are hoping that by the time the staff member comes back in today, she will have concluded to make the purchases for Ndumi. We however appreciate the fact that you have made a follow up on this business to establish its status, and we will be happy to make any further clarifications with regard to this or any other business.
In the meantime Diane, we appreciate your support to this and other businesses into which you have made an input. I have watched these loans, changing lives and making a really big difference in the clients lives.
Thank you very much Dianne. We shall stay in touch.
Sincerely,
Irene Kamau
Action Now Kenya.
I can say two things about this response:
- 1. WOW! and
- 2. Ndumi Mutua's loan disbursed this morning. So she now has all the material she needs to make those school uniforms for fall.
I knew about the "first of the next month funds are sent to the MFIs" and that most did not have a cushion as Prisma does to act as soon as loans are shown as funded on the website, but I had NO IDEA that the MFI staff actually buys the requested items for/with the clients, but.... WOW. This is SO much more amazing than I'd even imagined.
GO NDUMI MUTUA! GO ACTION NOW: KENYA! GO KIVA!--Diane.
