Summary of project status and achievements:
The FMI loan officers have spent the entire month of August trying to collect outstanding loans from clients who still owe a balance. The FMI staff has begun to get frustrated about this duty, so the PM tried to come up with some solutions in weekly meetings. In one meeting, the loan officers and the PM did a role play (loan officer and client) to practice the loan officers’ strategies of approaching stubborn clients. We have also initiated a monthly incentives contest, in which the loan officer that collects the most receives a small prize at the end of the month. This month, the loan officers collected a total of 615,000 kwacha. From my conversations with the FMI staff, they seem to agree with the inherent problems of FMI in Meheba and are on board with the decision to close down.
As for agro-loans, no collections were made this month. The agro-loan officer and the PM attended several co-operative meetings of the Mangana co-operative to discuss the new income of seed and fertilizer into Meheba. The seed and fertilizer arrived in the last week of August and will have to be purchased by FORGE soon for the next round of agro-loans to be made. As of the end of August, out of 21 farmers given loans in 2007, 10 farmers have paid back their loans in full, 8 farmers have paid back half, and 3 farmers have paid nothing.
Future activities and projections:
In the next couple of weeks, FORGE will have to decide how many agro-loan recipients it wants to take on for the 2008-2009 season. The PM has worked closely with the current FMI staff to determine who and how many loan recipients we should take on in order to remain sustainable. This document, complete with monetary projections and current balances, will be forwarded to FORGE management at the same time as this report. I have recommended that $2000 be loaned to FMI, with the expectation that it will be paid back by December 2009.
The FMI loan officers will continue to collect loan repayments through December 2008. We have also learned that a number of FORGE employees have outstanding loans, so the PMs are announcing at the next staff meeting that each of these employees is required to attend a one-on-one loan counseling session with an FMI loan officer. These sessions are expected to take place in mid-September.