Bringing Student Loans to Cambodia

Since I started working in microfinance early last year, I’ve met with and interviewed dozens of borrowers and their families.  I’ve conducted visits in all sorts of ways: sitting in a chair (or falling out of one), standing at a store counter, talking through a gate, leaning on the hood of a car, or side stepping through a pig sty.  What I hadn’t done, however, was sit on the floor.

That changed last week in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where I came to work with the Product Development Team at Angkor Mikroheranhvatho Kampuchea (AMK), Vittana’s newest partner.  Lots of work goes on behind the scenes before an MFI begins disbursing loans and uploading student profiles to the Vittana website–a product description must be drafted, evaluation criteria must be agreed upon, operational procedures must be approved, etc. One of the most important elements of this process is researching and defining the program’s target market.  That market is, of course, made up of real people, and when two AMK staff members and I pulled up in front of a row of whitewashed, box-like one and two-room homes near the city’s garment factories, a 40-something mother of five smiled warmly, unrolled a large floor mat, and motioned for us to sit.