Day #4-6 - First field trip to Hoa Binh

Hoa Binh province is a mountainous area about 70km west of Hanoi. We visited a collection of villages in what's known as a commune. All the villagers belong to the Muong culture, the third largest of Vietnam's 50+ ethnic minority groups.

We used the trip to speak to many different villagers (via our excellent translators) and stayed with a local family in their wooden stilt house. We borrowed bicycles to get around town and met a whole lot of friendly locals.

At the start of the trip we did an assessment of the village, noting the agriculture, the infrastructure and any problems or opportunities we could see. The village almost completely relied on agriculture and many households were close to being self sufficient. However they did rely on getting some income from crops and due to massive price fluctuations on the market in recent years, a lot of households had been just scraping by or even losing money on their investments.

We wee treated to lunch at the house of the head of the Women's Union in one village. Bloom work closely with the Women's Union, using their networks and local knowledge to determine how their loans could be best used. It was good to see such a good relationship based on respect and trust from both sides. It was also great to have such a delicious lunch!

We also met a woman who had never used the Bloom loans, or Microfinance from any other organisation. She explained that those types of loans had very strict repayment deadlines, so she preferred the flexibility of borrowing from a wealthy local, even though that meant paying much higher interest. She had had a good year, though, so hadn't needed any loans recently.

On our second day we visited the local primary school, which has received a lot of support from the Australian NGO Child Fund. It was a great experience and the staff told us that they were well funded and happy, although they did wish they could afford computers like the high school.

It was interesting to see how much of the farming is still done manually, by hand and with animals. The locals were keen to talk about farming in Australia and how it was easier because of machinery. It was obvious that with a bit more money to invest these people would be able to do their work much more quickly and with a lot less physical labour.