Key person: Hanitra (Yant) Andrianomanana
This partnership has now been receiving funds for three years and this is the first time BHW staff have been able to visit Antananarivo. The BHW Field Director visited for three days and spent time with the OM team and visited some of the beneficiaries and one church leader.
The funds are given to OM and channelled to beneficiaries through two churches, each church has their own programme. One church, (F.J.K.M. Ambodimita – Church of Jesus Christ Malagassy – the church planted by the London Mission Society) is much better at this than the other one. They have a wider vision and if it were not for one woman in the second church, the programme there would have finished, probably in failure. They are not so organised in follow up. FJKM Ambodimita is much more organised and has a meeting with the beneficiaries every month.
Between the two churches there are five loan groups. They are given a loan to start up a business and they pay it back. It is then lent out to other people. On some occasions the same people apply for a second loan.
The borrowers do not come to the OM team, their vision is to empower churches to get alongside people in their own church and community.
There are criteria for those wanting to borrow. They must have started something, it must be more than just a good idea. They must attend training sessions before they are given the loan and then continue to attend group meetings. OM personnel do the initial training with the loan groups. They are also expected to repay on time.
Elyse Jean Rajaofetra is a team member of OM Madagascar (2nd from left). He is a single guy who grew up in a family of eight siblings. It was a stable, Christian family. As a child he was keen on studying the Bible. He did a number of correspondence courses and one prize he won was the story of some jungle missionaries. This fascinated him. In 1994 he went to management school and then had jobs in the hotel industry, on a cotton factory and then with US AID doing development projects.
In 2002 he gave up his full time work and became involved in missions at the invitation of his church. He was sent to Wales to work in a housing estate. During his time working he did some lay training. He loved his time there and wanted to continue in missions. He got involved with OM training in South Africa and then joined the Doulos ship. He travelled through Denmark, Europe, Caribbean, Middle East, North and West Africa and finished on the ship in 2011.
In the OM team he is responsible for administration and finance and discipleship training. He has started a Bible distribution programme and is involved in preparing for the arrival of the Doulos in Madagascar later this year. He is involved in coaching and mentoring.
He loves fine art but this is on hold at the moment. He is single and is interested to maybe one day become involved in the Middle East.
Luc Benarivo is another member of the OM team and along with Elyse and Yant is part of the leadership of the team (1st on left in photo). He is in charge of media. This involves designing materials, a weekly radio programme, logistics and running the business training courses. They use a kit developed by the South Africa Institute of Entrepreneurship. It was adopted by OM and Luc was trained in it in 2013.
Luc joined OM in 2011 after doing missions training in Kabwe, Zambia. He is from a Christian family and has two brothers and three sisters. His father trained to be a pastor but also continued being a taxi driver. He had to give up school in Grade 9 because of lack of money. He started learning computers from his friends and discovered he was quite adept at it. He later studied graphic design and web design.
He became a Christian in 2002 and started going to youth group and church. That’s where he met Yant and became involved in missions through her encouragement. He is engaged to Fitahiana and they plan to be married in mid-September this year. She is into singing and dancing, her mother is a pastor.
A couple of days after I visited he was heading to the south for maybe two weeks to record part of the audio Bible in the Ntandroy dialect. They have an old version of the Bible that no one reads and it is out of print.
Miarisoa Rajafindrakaoto (on right) is the pastor of the F.J.K.M Ambodimita in Antananarivo. The church has about 3,000 people, about half that number come to the service each week. About 5% of the population of Madagascar is evangelical Christian but almost 50% call themselves Christian.
Miarisoa is an energetic woman with an obvious passion for her people. I had the privilege of moving around some of the beneficiaries of the loan programme with her and observed the way she interacted with them. It was very impressive. Her daughter Narindra (left), about 16 years old, came with us and I was also impressed with her ability to relate and listen to people. There are many young people in the church.
She thinks that loan programmes are very important and valuable and wants to see it grow in her church, but it needs to develop organically and not too quickly. The people in the programme are now much more connected to their faith and to the church. They all turn up when there are things to be done and have become contributors to church life.
Menja is a baker. He invited us into his home when we arrived, his wife rushed along later very flustered as she had not heard we were coming. She was embarrassed her house was a mess! Their house is basically one room and the bakery is in the basement. He was very proud of his little operation. He cooks in a little oven powered by charcoal and wood.
The day we visited he was baking an order for 150 pastries and we demolished most of his profit from that batch, they were great. The whole operation was pretty basic. His US$150 loan has improved his life greatly although with such high inflation in costs, he is struggling to keep up.
Rabe and his wife had three children but three years ago their 18 year old son died. This caused them a great deal of grief. They still have his photo on the wall in their little home. Their home is small and in the middle of a very densely populated area. I struggled to walk along the streets in the small little alleys between the houses. They have many chickens in and around their home.
Rabe is a carpenter but he didn’t have the tools required to make quality furniture. He got a loan and purchased some sanding tools. He plans to get another loan at some stage to purchase a router. He has to get someone else to do the routing at the moment. The quality of the furniture is quite remarkable given the quality of the timber he uses and the conditions in which he constructs them.
Rahely is a dynamic woman. She lives with her husband, children and mother in a tiny little house. However, the house is twice the size it used to be before they got their loan. They had a little workshop in their house in which they made little wooden blocks. These blocks have holes in them and fasten to the wall. Onto the blocks the wall sockets are screwed.
The workshop made for a cramped living space. With their loan they shifted their production to another town about 160 kms from Antananarivo. Before they had to transport the timber from that place and it was very costly. They also needed a lot of space for storage and they could not access the right timber. By moving the factory close to the timber source it ensures more constant supply, they transport the finished product rather than the raw material and they can produce a better product. And they have a lot more room in their house!
It means they are away from home a little more but it has helped so much. From the profit they have been able to extend their house and are now much better off. They have someone out selling the blocks and they concentrate on producing them.
Holy is married and has set up an instant photo shop. Before she got the loan people had to wait for a photo for a couple of days. This meant that her business was dying. With the loan she was able to purchase a better camera and a printer so she could do instant photos. This has helped her to build up her business again.
She has shifted to a better location as well which has helped. Monday is usually her busiest day with more than 20 customers. Mostly she takes photos for identity cards and drivers licences. The loans have made it possible for her to have a small income. Her husband is a photographer and his work is a bit spasmodic. She now needs another printer as this one is wearing out and she has to spend a lot on maintenance. She is thinking she may get another loan.
When the floods came through the funds sent from BHW were used in the context of the relationship with the churches. The OM teams led the relief with teams from the churches. Most went to the FJKM Ambodimita as they had many of their people badly affected by the flooding. They lost a whole year of production – mainly rice. The pastor was very thankful for the assistance and leadership of the OM team.
OM sees the micro-loans as an integral part of their strategy to empower people and to help churches engage their communities. They would love a team member to come along with a vision for this. They thought they had someone but it didn’t work out. This type of programme would have real application in the south as well (see MAD02).
This is a great opportunity to mobilise churches and introduce wider issues as well. This programme has helped establish and grow the relationship between OM and the two churches.
There is room for more team members to join the team. Otherwise, the team is in good spirits and working well together.
1) The impact that the loans are having on the families. Some are already quite well established and need no further assistance.
2) That they will find a team member with a passion to develop this aspect of the work. They are particularly thinking of a local person for this. They see the future of the work being largely carried forward with local people working full time.
This team seems to be functioning well. They are realistic in their planning and awareness of the issues. I think there is an ongoing journey with this team. They have vision and a pretty clear picture of what they want to do. The biggest issue they have is team members. But they are realistic in terms of what they want to achieve.
There are many aspects to the work of the team. They have a team of two in the south working amongst rural women and children. They have one person working amongst Muslim university students. They train in small business and micro-loans. They mobilise teams and churches for ministry and missions. They seem to have a clear understanding of the connection between proclamation of the Good News and dealing with the poor and disadvantaged.
This is a poor country, especially in the south where this team has a focus. I think there is a solid journey for us into the future with this team.