It's now been almost 4 months since we started our new Village Bank program and it is proving to be very popular. Our first group of 24 women was organized and received 120 000 baht (about $4000 USD) in early April to be used for income generating activities. Today, we now have 12 Village Banks with 252 members. Total Village Bank loan disbursements have been 1,260,000 baht (or $42 000 USD).

We have now decided to slow down our growth for several reasons:
1. The program is still new and we want to ensure that our first group of Village Banks perform well before expanding too fast. To date, we have not had one serious issue or even one late payment. It has been outstanding! However; we feel that it is appropriate to slow down and ensure that everything is going as smoothly as it appears. Our staff will be visiting groups and members over the next few months to confirm that the Village Banking system is working well at the village level.
2. We want to do a bit of strategic planning. We are receiving phone calls from villages all over the North asking for our program. We'd love to help them all but because of funds and staffing, we are limited in what we can do. In order to ensure that we help those who need it the most, we want to spend some time choosing areas that we feel NEED the program the most. We also want to continue our planning to reach into some of the ethnic minorities communities.

We are extremely excited about the potential of the Village Bank program. If it remains as good as it has been, the potential for growth is huge!