Part of a series of posts from Bachelor of Commerce student blogger, Danny Hertz, written during a Loran Scholarship outreach project in the Philippines.

It has been a busy few weeks here in the Philippines since my last update. I’ve spent most of my time in the field interviewing partner microfinance institutions as well as the end-borrowers. Several of the towns I have been travelling to have rotating “brown outs” where the electricity is only available to the residents for a certain number of hours per day, so internet access is occasionally hard to come by. However, working away from the office has allowed me to learn more than I otherwise would by strictly staying in the city.
Microenterprises

One of the common questions I have been asked by friends and family is what types of businesses microfinance loans go towards. Having visited a number of them, and used the services of a few as well, the short answer is that it varies greatly by community. In the more rural areas, small farmers who plant crops such as coconuts and rice are common, while in the semi-urban and urban municipalities, vendors who sell food or small items are the most frequent borrowers. There have also been quite a few random, but interesting, microenterprises I have come across including a lady who travelled throughout the village performing manicures for her customers, and a gentleman in a mountainous region who purchased a “habal-habal”, which is a mortorbike used to transport customers to areas that cars and tricycles cannot get to because of the lack of suitable roads.