Today we are seeing the Inner City Development Corporation (ICDC) in Quezon City, where the University of Manila is based. It is an upcoming area, but one of the worst hit by the typhoon in 2008. As usual when visiting an EDM partner we take local transport: in this instance, an unairconditioned train jampacked with people which takes us to EDM’s director, Frank Renaudin. He meets us on the platform and then we share a tricycle rickshaw for the last leg of the journey.
ICDC was founded by Zeny de Jesus in 2005. She was a social worker who had managed to revolutionise the sale of handicrafts by getting rid of the middle man. She also founded a tricycle business, trained in microfinance and worked for CCT until she felt they were too big for her, so she founded a Co-operative. She is also a local councillor and the area has around 20,000 voters.
ICDC has a staff of 22, of whom 12 are field officers. Its principal operation is in loans plus savings with a special savings programme for children, but it also generates additional income through a low-cost funeral business.
The children’s saving programme has got 1,200 children saving at least 1 peso a day from the age of 6 to13. The money is deposited in a special savings account gathering 7% interest /year. They can withdraw their money at any time, but only from 1-2 pesos every day. Mothers often follow their children’s example and start saving, but other times they come to raid their child’s bank account as they cannot pay a bill.
After lunch, Zeny is eager to show us her low cost funeral business. We are unprepared and walk into what we think is a memorial showroom with a showcase coffin and a model inside it.
This is not the case. Inside the open casket coffin lies the corpse of a 51 year old man, his face heavily made up, who has committed suicide 2 days ago. His widow sits in white shorts and a t-shirt besides the coffin, her face expressionless. We sit on a floral sofa less than a metre away from the white and gold coffin. Relatives offer us brimming glasses of coca cola and slices of white bread. Children run in and out and peer at us. Zeny talks to the widow as we tactfully try to ascertain why he killed himself. He hung himself and left a suicide note, which we are shown: ‘Forgive me, but the problems were too much to bear’.
Entrepreneurs du Monde have heard rumours that this man was deeply in debt to at least 4 Microfinance institutions and a loan shark. To us, his widow says they had no debts. I ask what his job was: his previous boss ran a cock fighting business. A gambler. One reason for debts begins to show. It also explains all the caged cockerels we’ve seen in slum allotment areas. After some more conversation it transpires that he had asked relatives to lend him 15,000 pesos recently. He had stomach pains. Perhaps he was depressed. His photograph by the coffin is of a handsome, peaceful-looking man.
Eventually we leave, still shaken by what we stumbled upon. Zeny lightens the mood by taking us to the Memorial Services Shop. We admire her range of 9 coffins, all made of different material, varying in price. Often she manages to recycle the coffins, which helps to offer the poor cheaper funerals – that and their donated Volvo hearse. They tell us how the memorial shop was flooded to the ceiling in the 2009 typhoon and how they had to buy everything again. Zeny explains the reasons she started a ‘low-cost funeral business’: ‘it is, she says dramatically, ‘very expensive to die in the Philippines.’ Funerals cost a lot, although they do not need to.
Frank and Zeny then take us on a short stroll through some of the worse slums we have yet seen. It is everything one imagines a slum to be, including the open drains, which do not look so awful until you get closer and see how clogged with rubbish they are. Half-clad children chase after us, one small boy bullies a kitten, neatly pegged washing flaps and twists in the wind.
We come across another white coffin. This time it belongs to a 17 year old girl who fell ill after the typhoon and was in hospital a long time. As before, there are a few tables drawn up with men silently playing cards.
We visit the home of Evelyn Baluyot who makes ‘rags’ for tricycle drivers. Rags are round multi-coloured cloths which the drivers use to wipe down their faces and their vehicles, especially during the rainy season. She uses her loan to buy remnants from a factory and sews the rags on a manual sewing machine. She sells a pack of 24 for 20 pesos and makes around 100 pesos a day. Her loan requires her to pay 300 pesos a week back. She is very sad as she lost 2 of her 4 children in the typhoon. She and her husband and the remaining children all live together in what looks to be about 4 square metres.
Tags: Entrepreneurs du Monde, Frank Renaudin, Inner City Development Corporation, microfinance, Zeny de Jesus