Last Day and Best Day in Vietnam

I was finally able to get back on and avert China's block on Blogger through my vpn. I'm working on catching up on my posts.

Saturday was our last day in Ho Chi Minh City and in my opinion was our best day here. We spent most of the day with the Dong Thap University students, who for the last year have been working on a microcredit project in the Dong Thap Province. Microcredit is an interesting concept whereby small loans, typically less than 100 USD, are granted to people in villages, usually so they can start or grow small businesses. The majority of borrowers are women and they are members of a group of lenders with a team leader that manages the lending and payback process. Borrowers have to demonstrate their ability to save, in addition to a monthly payment on the loan, interest needs to be paid, as well as a percentage that is reserved for personal saving. This concept was started by Professor Muhammad Yunus. Below is a link to the Grameen Bank founded by Professor Yunus.

Microcredit link

This particular project was started by a group of social work students at Dong Thap University in partnership with Rider University and the AAE. Ruby from the AAE traveled to Ho Chi Minh City today with the students so they could update us on their project and we could give them suggestions as they move to expand the project to additional villages. Because they are social work student their objective in the project was to improve the lives of the people in the 3 lending groups. They achieved that goal and more with this pilot project. Where they all acknowledge that they need to improve is on the business aspect of the project. As MBA students everyone in our group started poking holes in the business weaknesses of the project but even with those they only had 3 out of 39 borrowers that did not pay back their loans. One group was so successful that their savings is now their borrowing money.

We also saw a couple of case studies from the students about the businesses that they women created. One woman raised and sold baby ducks, one sold pastries off the back of her bike, and one opened a small shop. It is amazing how such a small amount of money for such a small business can make such a difference in people’s lives. We saw photos of where some of the people live and they were the equivalent of shacks on the water. Although there was a bit of a language barrier with some of the students, most only learned English in the last few years, you could see their pride in their work and the difference they made. Another great example of the overall pride of the Vietnamese people. I feel proud that we were able to assist, even in a very small way, with this worthwhile project.

Presenting our donation to the Dong Thap University microcredit project

We gave the students some suggestions for improvements they can think about for the project and then we broke off for lunch with some of the students. The student we were paired with didn’t speak much English but we had a good time anyway. We had fun having pizza with her and the pizza actually wasn’t bad.

After some free time we had our last Vietnamese dinner. Another great job by Van, our guide. We were excited to present him with a gift for making our trip so special and we had fun with the Dong Thap students, who were all wearing their Rider t-shirts that were brought for them. Again, although there were language barriers, it was an amazing experience for all of us and a wonderful way to end our time in Vietnam. I will always remember Vietnam for the warmth and enthusiasm that was shown to us by the Vietnamese people. It will be interesting to see if the same is true of the Chinese people.

Up early for our flight to Shanghai in the morning.