Women's Microfinance Initiative

Buyobo: Internships in Buyobo are for 30 - 90 days. Interns live in Bulambuli village and meals and housing are provided by women in the loan program. Interns are expected to make a contribution to WMI to cover their costs while in the village and to help pay for expenses associated with their internship project. All internships are unpaid. WMI volunteers live under the same conditions as the villagers - there is no running water and no electricity. Interns must arrange for their own transportation to and from Uganda.

Once in Bulambuli, interns will provide a variety of support services for the WMI program. They will assist with automating records, training WMI personnel on the computer and on certain programs like Excel and Word, tutor school age children in reading, writing and simple math, help borrowers with their book keeping, interview and compose borrower profiles, take photos and make videos of loan program activities.

TO APPLY:
Review the 2012 Summer Internship/Volunteer Program Information - Buyobo - click here.
Complete the 2012 Internship/Volunteer Application - Buyobo - click here and return it to: wmicontact@gmail.com.

All Summer 2012 internships have now been filled.

Questions?: Email wmicontact@gmail.com

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Summer - 2011 - Buyobo

The interns will decorate and paint the new classrooms started by the 2010 Whitman interns. They will also distribute 500 pairs of donated eyeglasses to villagers. In addition to assisting women in the WMI program with their businesses on market day, the interns will teach computer skills to students and women using the Internet café launched by the 2010 interns. The 2011 interns will be in Buyobo for two weeks.

University of Michigan graduate Erin Kelly, University of Maryland graduate Jaclyn Vouthouris and University of Edinburgh graduate Ida Stuve will assist with July 2011 Loan Issue, create documentary videos about life in Buyobo and work with the local director to update the budget. They will also help organize, analyze and provide borrower data to WMI in the US, and will provide business and computer training. Both will assist with the supervision of the Whitman High School interns.

John Finch traveled to Uganda for three weeks to improve the Internet café that was set up last summer. John will try to find software and hardware that can link the computers and monitor Internet usage. He will also work to create a system that will allow the Internet café to be self-sufficient and cover some of its own costs as well as a stipend for a monitor.

January 2011 - Buyobo

Colleen Rossier, a 2010 graduate from UVA with a degree in environmental science travelled to Buyobo in January for a 3 week internship with the WMI loan programme. She joined Montana Stevenson and Ainsley Morris who have been in Buyobo since the end of September working with the ladies on their transition to independent banking and preparing a banking manual. Colleen currently works for the US Department of Agriculture and was especially interested in local farming techniques, animal husbandry, and environmental stewardship. Click here to see a slideshow of her visit including many shots of village life.

Fall/Winter 2010/2011 - Buyobo

Montana Stevenson and Ainsley Morris will be in Uganda and Kenya working on WMI projects for 6 months starting in September 2010. WMI has asked them to blog once a week about their experiences. They will be traveling all the way to Kable in southwestern Uganda to launch new loan programs and as far as Nyahururu in central Kenya to visit existing ones. In between they will launch a new loan program in a village outside of Jinja, Uganda and visit other WMI village programs in Siaya, Kenya and Bududa, Uganda. Their visits will provide first-hand information on program operations an impact.

In January 2011, WMI will graduate its first borrowers to independent loans with PostBank Uganda (PBU). Montana and Ainsley will survey 120 WMI borrowers and conduct personal interviews with half of them to understand their banking needs. They will meet with PBU staff and prepare a written manual for the transition to independent banking. After reviewing the borrowers book keeping they will also prepare a basic accounting tutorial and provide advanced training to the borrowers who are moving on to financial autonomy.

Montana was an Echols Scholar at the University of Virginia, graduating in 2010 with a history major and economics minor. She traveled to Uganda in January 2008 to help launch the WMI loan program and has interned with WMI each summer since then, leading a high school internship visit to Buyobo this past summer. Ainsley graduated in 2010 from the University of Edinburgh with a Master's of Arts with Honors in Economics. She volunteered with WMI over the summer to develop the banking survey and outline the transition manual guidelines.

The banking study, transition manual and advanced training is supported in part by a grant from the Boeing Corporation and is being conducted in conjunction with PBU. WMI is very fortunate to have the expertise of these 2 dedicated and enthusiastic young women.

For pictures and comments about Montana and Ainsley's journey, follow their blog at: wmionline.wordpress.com

To see a slide show of Montana and Ainsley's work in the villages, click here.

Summer 2010 - Buyobo Interns

A group of 14 students from Walt Whitman High School, Bethesda, MD interned in Buyobo, Uganda during July/August, 2010. Led by Montana Stevenson, a 2010 graduate of UVa and a Whitman alum, the interns set up an Internet Cafe in the village with lap tops donated by Discovery Communications. They also tutored students at the Buyobo Primary School and in the after-school English program, and helped construct the foundation for three new class rooms at the school.

The trip was a huge success and the students were enormously popular with all of the youth who live in Buyobo. Check out a slideshow with pictures from their trip and find out about their experiences during their 3 weeks in Uganda.

Check out two short videos of the interns' experience.

January 2010 - Buyobo Interns

In January 2010, Alex Richardson, a sophomore at Oberlin College, travelled to Buyobo with WMI President Robyn Nietert and Advisory Board Member Denis Kalule to assist with the first major loan issue of the year and to help transition the first WMI borrowers to bank loans with PostBank Uganda. Alex was also in charge of photography and videography for the trip, documenting the progress the loan program has made in just two short years. He caught the enthusiasm of the entire village in his video of the ladies' parade to the Trading Center to celebrate the loan program's second anniversary and the graduation of the first borrowers to bank loans.

Check out his work posted on the WMI web site at:

Winter 2009/2010 - Buyobo Interns

In December 2009, Margot van der Vossen from Bethesda, MD (Walt Whitman high school alum) and Brian Miller from Rochester, NY, traveled to Buyobo to spend six weeks interning for WMI. Equipped with an M.A. in International Relations in Diplomacy International Studies from Leiden University - the Netherlands (Margot) and a Master's Degree in Math, Science, and Technology Education from St. John Fisher College, in Rochester, NY (Brian), they focused on developing WMI's fledgling youth tutoring program and helping the ladies with loan program procedures.

Having brought over 1,000 donated children's books with them, Brian and Margot expanded WMI's children's library, and continued the tutoring program introduced by interns Danica Castraith and Tobin Jones in May 2009. They also set up a PTSA/educational committee to take charge of the tutoring programs and other educational endeavors, turning over all duties and responsibilities to a community-member committee.

Through their meetings with solar power providers in Kampala, Margot and Brian were able to do comprehensive cost-comparisons for solar lighting options. They brought several demo solar products to Buyobo with them, and villagers were excited to learn about these new options. While traveling through Sironko, Margot and Brian met almost all of he loan program clients and were able to develop information about their living standards and how the program had improved their lives.

Thanks to extremely generous donations from WMI supporters, the 1000+ books that Margot and Brian added to the library generated much excitement throughout the village. Parents expressed their gratitude for helping their children develop valuable reading skills, and were immensely happy to see their children spending their free time reading. The books were very useful in the tutoring program, particularly the non-fiction, as they help fill the void of science and history educational resources at the local public school.

Margot and Brian spent as much time as they could getting to know the people of Buyobo. Brian spent many of his evenings playing soccer with the local young men, and Margot got to know the children and other spectators, chatting about everything from favorite Champions League teams to American politics to the upcoming elections in Uganda.

Both Brian and Margot are optimistic that the economy of the Buyobo region will continue to grow and expand through the businesses made possible by the WMI loan program. They saw how the women borrowers are better able to feed their families, obtain medical care for household members and pay school fees for their children though the income they earn and money they save.

Check out the links below for more information about Margot and Brian's work and the tutoring program.

Summer 2009 - Buyobo Interns

Tobin Jones and Danica Straith, juniors at McGill University, spent most of May and early June 2009 interning with WMI in Buyobo, Uganda. Their stay there was enormously helpful to building the WMI program. After numerous trips to Mbale and innumerable hours tinkering with Olive Wolimbwa, the Local Program Director's lap top computer, they were able to install a modem and get her hooked up with wireless Internet access. This was huge step forward for the WMI program. Olive can now send e-mails and communicate via the Internet without having to travel the 2 hours to Mbale by bus and without having to wait in line at the local Internet Café.

Tobin and Dani worked on automating the WMI records and provided Olive with Excel spreadsheet training. Olive has been attending computer training school and with Dani and Tobin with her for a month, she made rapid progress.

The interns launched the WMI tutoring program with 40 children for an hour each day. They reported that the children were angels and eager for the help with their schoolwork. WMI provided notebooks, pencils and some simple workbooks. The woman paid 1,000 shillings per week for each child - which is about 50 cents. We believe that the improvement programs that WMI launches must be working toward sustainability. The small fee helped support the program and it helped the women put a value and spending priority on education for their children. The tutoring program will continue in the fall.

They photographed a number of women in the loan program and helped them develop biographies detailing how the loan program has changed their lives. Check out their work on the WMI web site.

Summer 2008 - Buyobo

Hart Wood, a junior at Mary Washington College in Virginia, traveled to Buyobo in July 2008 to help with WMI's third and fourth loan issue. It was the first time WMI had gone from issuing 20 loans at a time to issuing 40 loans at a time. His visit was appreciated by all the children of the village, who followed him everywhere, especially once they found out he always traveled with little jars of bubbles. Hart's assistance was invaluable as the bank wire transmitting the funds for the loan issue was erroneously posted to the wrong account and he spent endless days backtracking through the electronic wiring system to locate the problem and resolve the issue. Once back at college, Hart wrote to us at WMI to reflect on his time in Buyobo,

"My time working for WMI in Uganda was one of the most valuable experiences of my life. It was a great opportunity to be able to do actual microfinance field work, which was made even better by allowing me to start my economic development career with an MFI who was just getting settled themselves. In Uganda, I met some incredible people and got to work in a culture vastly different from ours. There were a fair share of challenges, but we overcame them all and I ended up with a great number of lessons that I've since taken on to all of my other development work. Thanks to WMI for my first real experience in economic development work - I can't wait until I get to go back to Buyobo!"

January 2008 - Buyobo

Montana Stevenson, a sophomore at the University of Virginia, accompanied by WMI President, Robyn Nietert (her mom) and Board Member June Kyakobye, traveled to Buyobo in January 2008, as WMI's first intern. She assisted in the development of the microloan program format and in all aspects of the loan program launch. While in Buyobo, she was in charge of all document organization and worked in a team with a translator to interview prospective borrowers and help them write simple business plans. She vetted business ideas to raise chickens, market bugoyas (a native fruit) and open small shops, and then helped borrowers complete all of the loan program documentation. After the loans were issued, Montana assisted with the 2 days of training in marketing, business operations, and management concepts. Although many of the women had operated micro-businesses before, no one had ever explained the benefits of record keeping and she tutored borrowers one-on-one in book keeping basics. The actual logistics of the funds distribution for the first loans were very challenging - Montana organized the loan issue and accounting system.

As part of the team of the first WMI representatives to visit Buyobo, Montana acted as an ambassador for the loan program. She interviewed community leaders, spent time with the village children, met with bank officials and photographed and videotaped the program launch. After a week in the village, the ladies of Buyobo grew very fond of WMI's first intern and prayed for her return sometime in the future.

Uganda Internships

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