World Vision Microfinance helps support entrepreneurs and their communities to become self-sufficient.

Thank you so much. Your support is helping budding entrepreneurs work their own way out of poverty, enabling them to build a successful business and restore pride for themselves and their community.

To save on administration costs and send more money to microenterprise clients, we are making the transition to email reports.

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Thank you for helping us serve the poor more efficiently.

• KIWI INVESTMENTS RETURN MULTIPLE WINNINGS
• ARE YOU UP FOR A CHALLENGE?
• LAUGHING HER WAY TO THE BANK
• BAKING FOR EDUCATION
• MONEY IN OLD BONES
• MILLINER ALL SMILES
• YOUNG AND SHARP

Yak butter, cheese and milk products, along with cashmere garments and Mongolian fashions are flourishing thanks to Macquarie’s Investment Bank.
“Macquarie, you pride yourselves on bringing a world of opportunity to your investors. There is a synergy between our organisations,” said Les Stephenson, acting CEO of World Vision NZ, when he received the final cheque in a total donation of $350,000, invested in VisionFund .

“This money brings children the opportunity to be educated, drink clean water and enjoy improved access to health facilities,” Les told the audience of investment bankers. He assured everyone their donation quadruples in value as small microenterprise loans are quickly repaid and recycled enabling communities to realise opportunities and emerge from poverty.

Five years ago Macquarie Bank began an investment product, which promised a percentage of its profits to World Vision’s VisionFund for investment in community banks in Mongolia and Cambodia. A further $18,000 supported the emergency relief given to Myanmar's Cyclone Nargis survivors.

Enthusiastic VisionFund investors Simon Hadfield and John Widgery (wanted to do more than just give money.

So they hosted a golf tournament, which 80 clients attend, raising $3450 through sponsored holes, putting competitions and other on course competitions.

“This is a great example of how people and business can do something to raise the profile of our work,” says World Vision Christchurch manager Graeme Newton.
“It’s all about valuing people.”

This proud 32-year-old mother is working 70 hours a week to save for her two teenagers’ tertiary education. “I love my children and I’m determined to provide them with opportunities I never had,” says Mrs Oddelger, who has doubled her family’s income since she took out her first NZ$245 loan in January 2008.

The money not only expanded her 9-year-old sewing business but it also enabled her to start a coffee business. Laughing at the comparatively easy money, she says, each cup of coffee returns a 10 cent profit.

Earning $47 a month as a cook and waitress Seirchmeidag battled poverty daily. But two VisionFund loans changed her life. They enabled Seirchmeidag to buy an oven and the ingredients to bake traditional Mongolian cookies and raisin bread.

Today her profits pay university fees for her daughter. "I am very happy now. The VisionFund loan has encouraged me tremendously," says Seirchmeidag whose baking is creating new opportunities for her family.

Who would think you could make money from old bones? Well, in Northern Mongolia, Oyun is making a good living by collecting discarded bones from families.

She sells the bones to China where they are ground up into animal feed. But it doesn’t stop there, this collector extraordinaire who lives on the cold Mongolian-Russian border also recycles scrap iron, plastic and glass bottles.

And, it’s all made possible by a microfinance loan that pays the overheads and business development necessary to scope her markets.

Milliner Tsewelkhoroo smiles and says VisionFund has changed her life and the future of her family.

“May you be greatly blessed,” she says to donors who financed her low interest loan. It was difficult for Tsewelkhoroo to borrow money from a bank because she did not have any assets. But, in 2006 a VisionFund loan enabled Tsewelkhoroo to build her sewing business.

Specialising in making hats, gloves, traditional Mongolian clothing and pillowcases, Tsewelkhoroo’s efforts are so profitable she has built her family a brick house.

“I am thankful to VisionFund for the great work they are doing. The life of my family has improved. It is so wonderful,” says a happy and enthusiastic Tsewelkhoroo.

Effective investment in entrepreneurs requires astute business management.

In Selenge province, Oyunbileg ‘Bilgee’ Batsuren, 25, is VisionFund Sukhbaatar’s sharp branch manager. Qualified in Bank Finance and Economics, Bilgee leads a team of three women.

The office, fully funded by Kiwis, opened in August 2007 and 83 per cent of loans go to women who Bilgee says are great credit risks.

 

 

 

To be part of VisionFund contact Rupert Ross on 0800 800 776 or email Rupert.Ross@worldvision.org.nz

It's not easy to start up your own business. Here in New Zealand we have a great infrastructure, accessible capital and business development loans, years of business tradition and a wide knowledge base. All these Mongolian entrepreneurs want is a chance to work their way out of poverty, and you can enable them.