Building resilience among microentrepreneurs in the Philippines

This blog was written by Dr Ajaz Ahmed Khan, senior microfinance advisor at Lendwithcare. It was first published on the Virgin Unite website for Global Entrepreneurship week and has been reproduced here with their permission.

This year for Global Entrepreneurship Week we will be sharing inspirational stories of how entrepreneurs can provide a shining light of hope in even the darkest of situations.

The Philippines ranks third in the list of countries in the world where a natural disaster is most likely to occur, after the Pacific islands of Vanuatu and Tonga. Although it is also prone to earthquakes, flooding and droughts, it is typhoons that strike the Philippines most frequently. The state weather bureau PAGASA estimates that, on average, eight or nine typhoons or tropical storms make landfall in the Philippines each year, with another nine or ten entering Philippine waters.

Photo ©Peter Caton

RubyMoon lends 100% of its profits to Lendwithcare women entrepreneurs

Lendwithcare now has a community of over 33,000 lenders, supporting over 45,000 entrepreneurs around the world.

One lender is ethical swimwear company RubyMoon, who uses 100% of their net profits to lend to women entrepreneurs through Lendwithcare. RubyMoon has been lending for 5 years, and so far has made 179 loans to women entrepreneurs and entrepreneur groups. We got in touch with founder Jo to find out more about why she wanted to involve RubyMoon in Lendwithcare, and her lending story so far.

Jo, founder of RubyMoon

Green Microfinance - supporting renewable energy in Vietnam

Biogas facility in Vietnam © MACDI 2014

In recent years a growing number of ‘green microfinance’ initiatives have encouraged eco-friendly microenterprises and supported the use of renewable energy. One such programme is implemented by Lendwithcare’s partner in Vietnam, the Microfinance and Community Development Institute (MACDI). MACDI provides loans to rural households so they can install household plants that use animal waste to generate biogas, a clean fuel that can be used for cooking, lighting and heating.

Finalists for Lendwithcare Grassroots Entrepreneur Awards announced!

Public voting has closed for the 2014 Lendwithcare Grassroots Entrepreneur Awards and the ten most popular entrepreneurs, featured below, have been passed to our expert judging panel to pick an overall winner.

The standard of entrants has been extremely high. Every one of the 33 nominees is inspiring and has demonstrated an incredible level of enterprise and entrepreneurialism, often in the most challenging circumstances. The Lendwithcare Grassroots Awards recognises the most innovative and determined small businesspeople in poor communities in the developing world. The Awards celebrate creativity, enterprise and innovation, and prioritises social values and poverty alleviation.

It’s now down to our able panel of high profile names from across the business world to come to a final decision. Alastair Stewart, Deborah Meaden, Levi Roots, Nick Hewer, Richard Reed, Sir Stuart Rose, have a difficult decision on their hands! 

Lendwithcare.org supports important green initiative in the Philippines!

We have added our first sustainable social enterprise loan to the lendwithcare.org website to help tricycle taxi drives to acquire cleaner engines for their tricycles.  We are supporting an initiative launched by our partner in the Philippines, SEEDFINANCE and a local company called “Clean Engines Incorporated” (CEI) to help reduce air pollution in Metropolitan Manila.  This initiative aims to encourage local tricycle taxi drivers to switch over from two-stroke petrol and diesel powered engines (highly pollutant) to environmentally-friendly liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) engines.