Hospitality Business Management: - College of Business ...

in her community are able to provide
for their families.”
Typically, the business started by
one borrower can provide for her
entire family, Randall said. At present,
Unitus has helped 679,000 borrowers
through its nine microfinance partners,
so “we’re really helping three
million people get out of poverty.”
There are some facts that have been
discovered about the microfinance
industry, which is about 30 years old,
he said. When they provide loans
for poor women to start their own
businesses, those women typically
will choose to spend proceeds on
their children, including health care
and education. In many cases, those
children will be the first in their
family to go to school.
They also know that nutrition of
the borrower’s family will be greatly
improved. “We’re really providing a
means, if you’re living on less than
$2 a day, eating twice a day, to go
from two meals a day to three,”
Randall said.
They also know that the borrowers
often have very sharp business
instincts, despite a lack of education.
“Don’t underestimate the intellectual
ability of the poor,” he said. “Whether
it’s figuring out I can sell more tortillas
if I move my stand here or save by
buying in bulk, you don’t need a
degree to know that.”
Last April, Randall’s job became a
lot less theoretical when he went to
Africa.
“I (was) in Kenya, visiting our
partner, Jamii Bora Trust, one of the
largest microfinance institutions
in Kenya. It has 120,000 borrowers
currently, and is a phenomenal
success story. They operate across
Kenya. Fifty percent are in the slums
in and around Nairobi. It’s a city
of four million, two million in the
slums around the city. They do a lot
of work with people living in that
kind of setting. Along with providing
loan products…they also provide
health care insurance for $12 a year in
conjunction with a Catholic hospital.
It’s quite amazing they can provide
it. That actually includes HIV medications.”
And that is a vital consideration;
according to a recent story in the
Washington Post, people living in
towns in Kenya have an HIV rate of
about 30 percent.
Randall spent time in the second
largest slum in Nairobi, which he said
made him feel as if he had stepped
directly into a picture of a different
world.
“It was motivating. It was encouraging
to see that microfinance is
really having an impact on individuals.
I sat down and we talked about
their lives before and after receiving
loans. We learned people really are
able to increase their incomes by
starting up businesses, and that they
are using their additional incomes
to do things like sending their kids
to school, purchasing health care
insurance, having a better nutritional
intake. That was really encouraging.”
Nonetheless, there’s hardly time to
be complacent, he said.
“You come to understand microfinance
is not the end-all solution, but
that there’s a lot of work to do. It’s
12 WSU College of Business