Like Mr Franciscus, Mr Yakobus is a founding member of the Jelayan Kaki Kuta branch of Keling Kumang, our partner in Indonsia. He has been a member for 10 years and was one of the first collectors or loan officers for Keling Kumang in the region. “When I started I walked 7-8 hours one way to the headquarters to deposit the money from our loans,” he told me....

Last week the Traditional Credit Union (TCU) and World Education Australia (WEAL, the parent organization of Good Return) signed a contract for World Education Australia to assist with the design and development of a financial literacy training package for TCU members. Anne Shew (Training & Development Manager, TCU) said, “It will be great working with WEAL to...

To date sales of our solar lamp in the Philippines have been slow. Part of the reason for this was that our Filipino local solar agents were trialling our product– to see how it would work in their homes. And part of the reason was that our agents were waiting for the harvest season – “that’s when our clients have money!”, the agents said. But with the...

I have been in the Philippines for the past month working on our sustainable energy program, and in this time I have attended a number of Good Return’s Savings and Debt Management courses. At one course I spoke with two of Good Return’s client trainers – clients who showed an interest in and aptitude for teaching. Mary Ann and Julie told me why they were...

An update from Edy, our Financial Training Coordinator based out of Dili, Timor-Leste Unfortunately earnings from Celeste’s kiosk business have been on the decline with more and more competition in the local village. Five years ago, Celeste had been making a gross income of $10 per day, but today struggles to make half that. Celeste became a client of Moris Rasik...

An update from Rose, our Training Program Manager, based in the Philippines  I was excited.  After a few months and 2 reschedulings, I finally saw my “partners” again.  I can remember well their enthusiastic and excited faces when 4 months ago, I asked them about attending the Part 2 of our Training of Trainers, and I received a chorus of...