Saturday October 20th, 2007 marked the inauguration of two Mifex stores, located in the two neighborhoods where we operate. Alongside the Mifex offices, these stores offer wholesale products to cooperative members. We sell plastic goods for the home, school supplies, toys, and arts and crafts materials. In poor sectors, making and selling crafts is a lucrative business. To aid micro entrepreneurs in their businesses, we offer workshops to the public in sandal making, fomix (foam crafts), and cosmetology, to name a few (more about this at merit.mifex.org).
Sales of Nestle products are booming due to their popularity and wholesale prices. Snacks, condiments, candies, and milk are very popular with clients who run stores. Nestle distributes these products to Mifex at a discount which is passed onto clients.
The benefits of buying from Comex are reduced transportation costs, quality goods sold without an intermediary, and personalized attention for customers. Cooperative members also have the option of buying merchandise using their credit or savings.
We are pleased to bring these quality products to our clients and we support them in their business endeavors. Thanks to IMAR, Venditore, and Nestle for their partnership in this joint venture.
Mifex and Kiva were featured on CNN Español on October 18. This 15 minute clip aired throughout Latin America and Spanish-speaking cities in the U.S. four times over two days on the show En Effectivo. Carmen Rueda, our first client posted on the Kiva.org website, was one of the feature clients. Recently widowed and left as the primary caretaker of a large household, she illustrated how a microcredit loan helped her start a successful food-vending business selling lunches and plantain chips. Her story highlights the direct impact Mifex has in improving quality of life in the poorest sectors of Guayaquil.
Currently 1 out of 5 borrowing persons in Ecuador is a beneficiary of a microloan. Thanks to CNN Español for bringing the work of Mifex and Kiva to their viewers around the world. We are proud to share the success stories of over one million clients!
Our borrowers have received a very special visit. Tom, a contractor in Virginia and one of the members of the Kiva community, came from Washington D.C. to meet Ervin Lino at Picanteria Tres Hermanos and Teodoro Burgos at his mechanic shop. Despite their language barrier, Tom and the borrowers were able to discuss the loans and the effects of microfinance. Tom even brought Ervin a gift, a knife he could use for his business. He also enjoyed a dish of encebollado at Picanteria Tres Hermanos. The Mifex team wants to extend their gratitude to Tom and his girlfriend, who not only contributed towards the loan, but who also have taken the initiative to come to Ecuador, learn more about the socio-economic landscape of the country, and meet some of the people they help face-to-face.
Read all about the visit on Tom’s Blog !
Earlier this week, our partner Kiva was featured on PBS Frontline. Since then, they've been getting so much traffic that their servers haven't been able to keep up.
This is a problem we'd actually like to congratulate them for. These are just the growing pains of an expanding business achieving success. While we hope their servers are back up-and-running as soon as possible, we wish them continued growth and success.
Currently, a stripped-down version of Kiva is running so that everyone will still be able to lend. Happy lending!
We launched our Finance program in April, 2006. By enabling microfinance through the internet, we have been able to pursue our mission of lifting poor Ecuadorian communities out of poverty. Thanks to our partner Kiva, we have funded nearly 100 clients to date, and continue to grow rapidly.
In October, our first group of borrowers successfully finished repaying their loans, and many have already received their second Kiva loan.
Seeing our clients' growth over the past six months has shown us the clear and tangible benefits of micro-credit. In celebration of our half-year birthday and as a token of gratitude to the generous Kiva lenders, we have set up a gallery of the profiles of our first ten borrowers.
Thank you for your generosity, keep lending!
Here at Mifex, we love to discuss issues related to microfinance and Ecuador. We find ourselves having lively discussions at meetings, over lunch, and even during after-work R&R. We thought it would be great for the rest of you to join in on our discussions, so today we launched the Mifex Forum.
The Forum is a place where you can share your views and opinions about microfinance, current events in Ecuador, tourist hot spots, and anything in between. If you have an idea for a new forum, please let us know through our feedback form.
[Update 2007-9-28]: The forum is currently closed for tweaking and renovation. Our first version of the forum was susceptible to spam, so we are now working on a new spam-resistant version, as well as other minor changes. We apologize for the inconvenience.
There was no scarcity of candidates in Ecuador's presidential elections this past Sunday which had 13 contenders fighting for the people's approval. Not surprisingly, no one candidate was able to attain a majority of the vote and the stage was set for a second round run-off in November between left leaning Rafael Correa and the political right's representative Alvaro Noboa.
Correa was leading the polls before the elections due to his talk of revamping the constitution and overhauling the corrupt and inefficient political system of the country. He also supports policies that worry the Ecuadorian upper-class and Wall Street. For one, he is against a free trade agreement with the US. He is also set on restructuring the foreign debt and has criticized dollarization.
This is Noboa's third try at the presidency of Ecuador. He is amongst Ecuador's richest men as he owns more than 100 companies. Noboa supports free trade with the US and vows that he will seek policies that will create jobs. Yet the people seem skeptical and are concerned that he will enact policies that will benefit only big business and the rich.
The run-off elections promise to be highly competitive as both candidates will accuse the other of being political extremists and will likely confront each others' policies heavily in the media.
Stayed tuned to mifex.org for further updates and coverage of the 2006 Ecuadorian presidential elections.
Mifex is thrilled to congratulate Nobel Peace Prize winners Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank. They are responsible for first formalizing the concept of microfinance as a poverty alleviating tool in Bangladesh.
In a time when no one believed the poor were bankable, Yunus and his Grameen Bank went against conventional thinking and broke the paradigms of traditional banking. While formal banks only made substantial loans to mid-high income individuals, the Grameen Bank would lend small amounts to poor people. In a society where women were marginalized, Yunus and his organization chose to only lend to groups of women. As governments worldwide struggled to alleviate poverty with macroeconomic policies, the Grameen bank chose to directly empower the poor through microfinance.
Mifex is proud of Yunus and the Grameen Bank's historical accomplishment and is grateful for the contributions they have made to the microfinance community.
CUENCA, Ecuador - Today we have reached a milestone in the history of Mifex. We have signed a partnership with the Azuay Chamber of Tourism that will allow us to promote businesses from the Azuay province to the international online community. In the near future, we will be rolling out new features on mifex.org to allow you to begin supporting these businesses.
The Azuay province is home to Cuenca, the beautiful city whose history goes back nearly 450 years. Cuenca is known as a college town, home to eight universities, but it is famous for its agricultural products, including some of the world's most delicious cheeses and chocolates.
Whether you're planning a trip to the Equator or shopping for exotic treats, you can learn how you can support these businesses at www.mifex.org/ecuador/.