Bloom Microventures

Traveling in a region over run with tourists and finding ourselves feeling a little empty and disconnected when visiting the big attractions means we've had to look a bit harder to find meaningful things to do. I read about the Bloom Microfinace venture in my research and was interested in their model of responsible tourism. It's a bit of a trend these days to claim to be a responsible tourism operator but I've discovered many of these claims are false. Bloom Microventures is the real deal and our day with them gave us our most genuine and insightful time in Vietnam. They work within a certain region, build a relationship with the community, then offer small low interest loans to women in that community who are below the poverty line and want to invest in a small sustainable business. Usually it's used to purchase more livestock, put in another crop or diversify their present cash base. They must complete a course on financially literacy and pay their loans back within a year, in which case they can apply for a second slightly larger loan. Each loan is funded by a tour to the community and a visit to the family who will be receiving the loan. It is an amazing opportunity to visit an authentic rural community and speak to the women about how the small loans are changing their lives and opportunities. The company only takes one tour per week, sometimes two if they run a private tour as well. They keep numbers to a minimum and are sensitive and ethical in every situation.
Our tour was to an ethnic minority village 70 kms west of Hanoi. Our interpreter and tour leader was the lovely Ly who spent much of the hour car trip explaining the intricacies of microcredit and answering our many questions. Firstly we met the woman who would be receiving the loan from our tour. She was raising two varieties of pigs, local mountain ones which were apparently more tasty and fetched a better price and plain old porky pigs. She needed the money to feed the pigs for longer so she didn't have to sell them now because the price they fetch has just plummeted. We saw the pigs then spent some time separating dried corn from the kernel so it could be ground, cooked and fed to the pigs. It is all an incredibly labour intensive process. Her 15 year old daughter joined us and kept dashing the boys off to fetch local apples from the tree or pick pomelo for us. They fed us tea made with local forest roots and home made rice crackers which were extremely moorish. The boys had a go at pulling water up from their well and her husband and mother in law turned up for a chat and a sticky beak. By the time we farewelled them we felt like part of the family. We made our way to lunch at the head of women's union in the village and had a tasty home cooked meal. Her husband, who is also chief of the village showed us how to harvest cassava, which was a great joke to the locals who gathered to watch. We wandered through the village with a trail of kids tagging along and watched some local fishing. We visited the school and the medical clinic (sponsored by Austrade) and finished with digging up some worms (thanks Jed) and fishing for perch in a small pond, resulting again in many kids gathering round to help out and and giggle at us. Bloom are going to keep us updated on our lovely family and their pigs and we look forward to hearing how their new venture of duck farming goes.
Ly told us $300 BILLION is made from tourism in developing countries and not even a fraction of that gets to most of the population of those countries. We felt lucky and honored to be invited into those homes today and so glad that the money we paid will be going directly into the hands of the people who need it most.
It's a win win and not a tourist bus in sight.

http://www.bloom-microventures.org/vietnam