Students see the impact of microloans firsthand

Slop and social innovation don't usually appear in the same sentence, but in July a group of UTS BUiLD program students went to see how food for pigs can improve the quality of life of villagers in Vietnam.

It's not normally connected with new ideas, however 'slop' gained fresh significance for UTS students from the Beyond UTS International Leadership Development (BUiLD) program when they travelled to Vietnam in July to learn about social development.

It was a hot, sticky summer day when the students travelled two hours by bus from Hanoi to an ethnic minority village in the mountainous Hoa Binh province. Entering the village, the students walked past a sow so heavily pregnant that it could barely move. Little did the sow know that the students were there to learn about how more slop would help to improve the lives of her owners.

For just over a week the BUiLD students studied social entrepreneurship, an emerging concept focused on helping people live better lives through new ideas and practices. The group learnt what work was being done in this part of Vietnam by a variety of organisations, ranging from small charities to multinationals.

For Bachelor of Business student Elizabeth Kastanias, it was inspirational. "It's great to see so many ideas and plans that strive to tackle these pressing social issues," she said.

Learning about the role of pig food in social development was one such idea students were exposed to while in Vietnam. Travelling about 70 km from Hanoi to Hoa Binh, students joined a 'microtour' with Bloom Microventures, a social enterprise working in the space of pro-poor tourism and microfinancing.

Its model focused on using the fees generated from tours to provide low-interest microloans to villagers who are in need. Students were given a chance to see another side of Vietnam by visiting farmers' homes and speaking with them. They also visited a local hospital.

Half the group met Ms Hue in her family's home, who talked about the challenges of living and earning money in the countryside. Some of the challenges she faced included sanitation, health, welfare and social progression.

One of the barriers to development is the ability to access affordable loans, according to Lain Heringman, CEO and tour guide of Bloom. He explained that Ms Hue had a pregnant sow due soon, the main source of her family's income. But, due to the outbreak of swine disease, the price of piglets had gone down dramatically.

She needed money so that she could delay selling the piglets immediately after birth and get a better price for them at a later time. So, by providing a microloan to Ms Hue, she would be able to afford more slop as an investment in her own quality of life.

The hospital visit put learning into context for PhD candidate Rajul Joshi whose research project involves looking into the diffusion and commercialisation of grass-roots innovation using traditional knowledge in India.

"From a research perspective, the local hospital administrator gave me an understanding of how traditional medicinal knowledge is shared and protected through the hospital's model," she said.

Joshi said she saw how grass-roots innovation using traditional knowledge could help in product, process and enterprise development and overall socio-economic development of the community. She plans to build a case study comparing the key aspects of knowledge diffusion and enterprise in traditional medicine in Vietnam with India.

Bachelor of Education in Primary Education student Nicole Stewart said the Vietnam experiences had given the BUiLD students something they could never get in a classroom.

"The benefits are beyond just academic, they are beyond something to put on your resume. Rather they are contributing to making you a more rounded, a richer, more aware and deeper human being," Stewart said.

"They provide another lens, another perspective through which to view the world and our place within it and to question it; to be critical of it and discover what we think needs to change."

Read more about the UTS BUiLD Changemakers in Vietnam trip in the group's blog.

Provided by University of Technology, Sydney