Trip to the Province

After a long and tiresome trip to the Philippines which involved two stop-overs at Detroit, Michigan and Nagoya, Japan, my cousin and I arrived at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport in the Philippines late into Friday night. But that wasn't the end of our travels. A quick power nap, a cold shower and some much needed food slightly revitalized us for another 10 hour car ride from Manila to Roxas, a small city in the northeast province of Isabela and the hometown of my father and my aunt.

Because of the scope of micro-finance, my signature experience would not be concerned with the financial markets and banks stationed in Makati, the financial district of Manila, but with the small businesses owned by local people in the province. As we drove through mountainous terrain and wide stretches of farmland, I began to wonder how many of the countless small sari sari (or "convenience") stores, farms and family-owned restaurants that we drove by received some funding from micro-finance. To many of these people, their businesses were the only thing they had. They worked in order to survive and if they lost their businesses, they lost everything. Realizing how important these businesses were to these small entrepreneurs, I saw micro-finance transform from an economic theory I was reading about into reality because it offered these people with the hopes of sustaining their businesses. And to me, hope is the greatest asset any business owner could have.