Micro-loan gift tokens

What Christmas gift can you get for someone who has got everything? A Bristol-based charity is hoping that this year, people will choose to help those who have very little by giving a gift voucher that is also a repayable loan. Suzanne Savill reports

This is the time of year when people start thinking about giving people they have never met a goat. Or seeds. Or a hygiene kit.

Sending gifts to people in developing countries instead of giving gifts to friends or relatives who already have plenty has become an increasingly popular Christmas custom.

However, Vashti Seth, pictured right, is hoping to encourage people to give a rather different kind os ethical gift – one which the recipient has to pay back.

She is founder of the Bristol-based charity Deki, which aims to empower people in developing countries by providing them with small person-to-person loans to help them set up or develop their own business.

Deki is issuing micro-loan gift tokens, starting at £10 this year, following the success of a pilot scheme of online vouchers which were sent by email.

Vashti, 34, is hoping the new gift token scheme will prove even more popular.

"What starts as a small loan of as little as £10 can go on to help a lot of people," says Vashti, a former student of the University of the West of England.

"We're hoping to double our support year-on-year, and we are on target to do that at the moment.

"We've grown five or six- fold since last year in terms of what is going out in loans."

Deki has already gone from strength to strength since Vashti launched it in 2008, and named it after Deki Dolkha, a Tibetan refugee who had been sponsored by Vashti's father as a child.

"The sponsorship meant Deki had the opportunity to go to school, but she had little opportunity to put her education to good use," explains Vashti, who kept in touch with Deki and later visited her in India.

"Poverty and lack of opportunities meant she had to return to her estranged family in remote, rural northern Tibet, and sending her money didn't really help because there simply wasn't the support to go with it.

"I came to realise that something more was needed than sponsorships and donations, so that rather than depending on handouts, people could set up their own businesses and become financially self-sufficient."

Instead of donating money to an organisation, people who decide to provide a small loan through Deki can choose which entrepreneur they want to support by looking at the website, and how much they want to donate.

They then receive updates and repayments as their loan is repaid, and they have the option to then reinvest the repaid money to support other would-be business people in developing countries. Deki takes no commission on the micro-loans.

Already, Deki has administered more than £80,000 of micro-loans, and more than 300 people in Ghana, Nepal, Togo and Malawi have been able to create a sustainable income.

"AIDS is a big problem in countries such as Malawi, so there are a lot of orphans who have grown up with no family support and have no hope of setting up a business to support themselves," says Vashti.

"We can identify people like this through our network of established field partners in the countries where we work.

"They can also provide business advice, so it's not just about sending money."

Deki has been named Best Social Enterprise by the University of the West of England, which until recently provided it with office space at its business incubation centre on Bristol's Harbourside.

The charity recently moved to an office in Montpelier to get extra space, and the four-time Academy Award- winning animator Nick Park, founder of Aardman Animations, recently became a patron of the charity.

Vashti says: "We are absolutely delighted to have his support, as he must get asked to get involved in so many charities.

"It's great to know that he thinks Deki is such a good idea."

For further information about Deki go to www.deki.org.uk/

Last year Karen Drake's gift to her daughter Zoe, then aged 20, was a Deki gift voucher to invest in the venture of her choice.

"She was studying at Sussex for her degree in International Development, and in previous years I'd given her Oxfam donations for pens and paper and mosquito nets for developing countries," says Karen, a mother of four, who is finance manager at Bristol's Spike Island art gallery and studios.

"I felt that the Deki offer was more personal between donor and recipient. My initial donation was just £10 in the form of a voucher for Zoe to invest in the venture of her choice."

Zoe not only enjoyed investing her gift voucher, but also gained a benefit her mother had not anticipated when she bought it, as she ended up spending time with Deki as an intern.

Karen says: "I didn't know at the time that they were based here in Bristol.

"Zoe included them in her list of companies to approach for volunteering."

Zoe is now teaching English in Strasbourg and studying French and German.

She says: "The first person I loaned to was Adisa Mohammed (pictured left), a young woman with three children, who had started selling pastries door to door.

"The demand for her pastries was increasing but she didn't have enough hands to keep up, or enough capital to buy bulk purchases of ingredients which would have enabled her to meet the bigger demand, and expand her business to employ more people."

Zoe, who will be staying in Strasbourg to complete a Masters degree, adds: "Adisa repayed her loan in only six months, so I've now reloaned my investment to Akossiwa Modenou (also pictured left), another young woman, who is looking to expand the range of services she can offer to her hairdressing clients.

"By increasing her turnover, she can ensure that she and her husband can keep their children in school and save for the future."

Karen and her husband David, who is director of Ffotogallery in Cardiff, have agreed to double the amount each time Zoe reinvests her Deki gift voucher.

"We have no plans to take out the initial amount but will keep loaning it, and more, each time," Karen says.

"It's great that you can make such a small donation and that this donation can make such a big direct impact. But if you want to take your money out, you can.

"At a time when you're money's not earning any interest in the bank, it seems a great idea to invest it with a Deki partner and earn a very different, but satisfying, form of interest."