Vision Fund

Today we focused on the Vision Fund, the entity that World Vision has created for microfinance. After devotions we received a briefing on how the Vision Fund works by some of the Vision Fund staff. It has been operative in Gulu for about 4 years and they are having a lot of success with it. The one criteria that differentiates them from other microfinance organizations is that the person seeking the loan must have children. Since WV focuses its work on children and their well-being, they want to insure that the loan will in some way benefit children. As I have read elsewhere, women are better at repaying loans than men, and the repayment rate is extremely high.

After the briefing, we drove for 1 1/2 hours or so to the Candangmone community which received microfinance loans. The president, Santos, spoke about the community and how the Vision Fund helped them. Below are a couple of pictures from the day. Santos is standing and Flavia is translating in the first picture and the second is of some of the Vision Trip Team,

After the briefing we headed back to Gulu and partway back stopped to meet Peter, a man who had received a microfinance loan. He was quite impressive. He spoke in English which surprised me, and he had received his first loan to help him in his farming. He is growing sweet potatoes to sell to farmers who will be planting them when the rainy season starts in the next several weeks. The neighbors were references for him to get the loan because of his investment in the community, trying to teach others about farming. His success will affect the well-being of those in his community. We took a field trip to see some of his fields planted with sweet potatoes. Below is a picture of one of them.

Tomorrow we spend the day at St. Thomas Moore School and Joan, Michelle, and I  are really excited about spending the day there.