MAKAZI BORA DIARY: Volunteer Promoters - Week 2: 25th June

29 July 2009

Volunteer Promoters - Week 2: 25th June - 3rd July 2009

93 people came in during the week and 16 new clients were registered. There seem to be a lot of clients coming from Charambe, which is an expanding informal settlement in which the office is located. Mbagala and Tuangoma have had the fewest registered clients. Mbagala is an established informal settlement that our interns working on a construction technical assistance survey indicate has limited construction activity taking place. If there is insufficient demand in Mbagala, we may expand the portfolio of the Mbagala credit officer’s to include a second, adjoining ward. Tuangoma has also had few registrations. It is a predominantly rural ward.

We have noticed that continued prevalence of “volunteer promoters” coming back with friends. Client relations should continue to be a focus. We have client principles and if we can implement them well we hope that the number of clients giving positive promotion about MAKAZI BORA will outnumber those who have complaints or bad things to say to their neighbours. Our client principles in summary are:

Quality of Service
Dignified Treatment
Truthful and Transparent Information
Appropriate Pricing
Protection from Unethical and Illegal Practices
Privacy of Client Information.

5 clients had their applications assessed during the week; their applications to go through peer review the following Monday. We ran out of our 2,000 MAKAZI BORA brochures and need to order more.

Scott next to our Client Principles at the Mbagala Branch Office. The principles and a promise to our clients are translated into Kiswahili and part of the clients' welcome packet.

No comments:

Post a Comment

MAKAZI BORA: A Housing Microfinance Program in Tanzania

Habitat for Humanity has been active in Tanzania since 1986. Up until 2008, it built low-cost houses at community-based projects across the country. The cost of each home was to be repaid into a revolving fund to build more houses. Repayment rates were very low and the annual average number of families served was less than 75. We felt we could do better.

In September 2008, the Board of Directors adopted housing finance for the poor as the organization’s core business. Out of this decision, a retail housing microfinance program called MAKAZI BORA was created as our entry point into the world of housing microfinance. MAKAZI BORA Diary is the story of how it develops - as it happens.

INCREMENTAL BUILDING

The photos below along the right column of our blog are of incremental building projects of people within the Mbagala Branch operating area, Temeke Municipality, Dar es Salaam. The houses would qualify for MAKAZI BORA home improvement loans, but all of the work seen was done prior to MAKAZI BORA being introduced to the area. They are examples of what people are doing on their own and projects to which an injection of affordable housing finance can add value and improve living conditions. Some of the houses in the photos belong to MAKAZI BORA applicants prior to receiving their loans. Others are simply houses viewed in the area.

People are already building.... Habitat is just helping them solve a finance gap to advance their own housing process with the MAKAZI BORA home improvement loan. In the absence of any realistic hope of formal housing assistance for the hundreds of thousands of households with low incomes in Temeke Municipality, we applaud and seek to support their individual efforts that are made with limited resources and using what is available locally in an effort to find housing solutions.