PEER Servants Trips

Central and Southern Africa - Capacity Building

2009-09-06T17:56:00.000-07:00

Six PEER Servants associates joined in different capacities in completing a wonderful 17-day trip to Central and Southern Africa wherein we visited Christian Action for Empowering Church and Community (CAFECC) in Uganda, Christian Empowering Microfinance (CEMFIN) in Zambia, and Aloga Financial Services in South Africa. PEER Servants President, Todd Engelsen, and his wife, Leslie, visited all three countries. They were joined by PEER Servants volunteer Richard Kinyua in Uganda and worked closely with the CAFECC board and staff to improve their loan processes and prepare for sustainable growth. Richard worked closely with the CAFECC staff in helping them transition to a new loan administration software package. In Zambia, PEER Servants volunteer Canga Kamwambe joined them as they provided consulting to the CEMFIN board and management in completing their three-year financial projections and business plan needed to submit to the Bank of Zambia to become an official microfinance insitution. Finally, in South Africa, PEER Servants Africa Regional Management Consultant Jesse Ratichek and his wife Vicki joined them in a day of meeting with the senior board members and management to envision the next five years of Aloga.

South Africa - Kicking Off STI

2009-02-28T17:36:00.000-08:00

One of our biggest current projects is called our “Strategic Training Initiative” (STI). This is where we are taking the experience of our largest and highest impact microfinance partner, The Center for Community Transformation (CCT) in the Philippines, and helping our other, much smaller microfinance partners learn from their story. We kicked off STI in February 2009 with a team of four PEER Servants volunteers and staff (Joseph Tucker Edmonds, Jesse Ratichek, Patrice Harduar, and Todd Engelsen) joining three CCT staff (Beth Veñegas, Miraflor Ligaya, and David Campanero) in South Africa to work with the Aloga Financial Services board and staff. It was a time of vision casting, training, relationship building, and strategic planning. We also visited and celebrated with some very impressive Aloga clients and enjoyed time together appreciating the beauty and rich cultural heritage of South Africa. From South Africa, Jesse Ratichek and the three CCT associates traveled on to Nigeria to focus on similar initiatives with our Nigerian microfinance partner, Good Seed Enterprise Development.

Zambia - Training CEMFIN in Microfinance

2009-02-15T17:41:00.000-08:00

In February 2009, four PEER Servants volunteers from Charlotte (Jim Martin, Ken Lloyd, Dick Wilson, and Bob Roth) joined PEER Servants President Todd Engelsen to provide the next round of training to our prospective Zambian partner, CEMFIN (Christian Empowering Microfinance). CEMFIN is taking steps to launch their microfinance program in Lusaka later in 2009. The seven day trip focused on training the board members in how to effectively govern a Christian microfinance program and the new CEO and CFO in the first steps of how to effectively manage a Christian microfinance program. We also worked with the CEMFIN board and management to take the next steps in filing their MFI application with the Bank of Zambia. The trip helped CEMFIN make significant progress on their path to making their first loans while being a time where each of the five team members were tremendously blessed and strengthened by our Zambian hosts.