Week 5

This week has been very busy for us, with three straight 10+-hour days out in the hot, Ghanaian heat! Aside from teaching our classes, we have gone out to visit both past recipients and then potential loan recipients from our current classes.

We did double duty in Akokom with both collections and business visits. In Akokom, David and Rachel visited Akosua Owusuaa. She receved her first loan about six months ago to start a business selling banku and kenkey at a road-side table in her home village. Not only has she consistently made all of her payments on time and in full, but also she has used the profits from this small and simple business to begin building a kiosk. During the time that we were in Akokom, I watched a large number of customers come through—she always had a line of people waiting to buy from her. Akosua is hoping to get a second loan in the near future to help finish the funding of her kiosk and business expansion so that she can have a small restaurant. Even without a second loan, though, Akosua could potentially build her restaurant over time. She is continuing to make profits that she is reinvesting into her business every single month.

Pictured below is Akosua standing between her current table and the kiosk that she is building.

With out large first-time loan class in Asamama now down to about fifty, we have started to visit their businesses to get a better feel of which students from the class we may want to fund. We visited a dozen businesses on Tuesday, and the diversity of them is pretty large.