IPA: "Your Mission, If You Choose to Accept it..."

First 'official' correspondence from IPA as my employer regarding my hazing-- i mean-- first assignment. A bit overwhelming. I need to run these places by my mom and my good friend, Abby-- they're both originally from Leyte. I cut-and-pasted from the e-mail sent by Tomoko, the IPA country director for the Philippines and my boss:

There are initially two projects for you to work on in the Visayas and Northern Mindanao: 1. Expansion of group vs. individual liability and 2. Credit with health insurance (kasapi). In terms of your base, leyte (area manager's office is in ormoc, and that's where the previous IPA staff lived) or cebu (convenient for traveling to butuan and leyte, but of course more expensive) may be the most convenient for the first few months.

i would actually recommend staying in butuan for the first week or two just to see how things are run. paulette is based in butuan, and i'm often there too. you're welcomed to stay in our apartment. this might work best for Kasapi project so that you'll have a good picture on what needs to be done.

(1) group vs. individual lending

we don't have a specific timeline yet, but the areas of expansion planned in the next half year are:

• toledo (cebu island)
• bacolod (negros)
• iloilo, roxas (panay)
• jagna (bohol)
• naga, outside of legaspi (bicol)
  

my guess is that toledo will come first. i think the attached documents will give you a good idea on how the project implementation works, but let me know if you have any question. one note on the implementation--right now, we are considering removing the baseline business census all together, because we have had a very difficult time locating all business women who end up borrowing from Green Bank. dean & xavi (the World Bank collaborator on this project) will decide what to do (hopefully) in the next week or two.

(2) Credit with health insurance

this project is in the middle of implementation. we are offering national health insurance to Green Bank microfinance clients. we conducted baseline and marketed to individual-liability clients in nov/dec last year, and this quarter, we are expanding the implementation to group-liability clients (without baseline data collection). there are a lot of logistics to be figured out, in-house bank policies, record keeping, etc. and the area of expansion is leyte island and northern mindanao. paulette will be in charge of the project. she's based in northern mindanao, it's a tough project for one person to handle, so i'd like you to help her in the implementation.

Finally, i just wanted to let you know that there is still a very small chance that we need your help in manila at one point in the coming year. Projects there need a lot of monitoring, and luke, who is currently based there, might move to the next location. but nothing is for sure yet and i know your preference too. will keep you updated.