Creating shared value
With increasing inflation rates, low income households are finding it extremely hard to make their ends meet. They are burdened with so many basic expenses that providing good health facilities and education to their children is not possible for them. Often both husband and wife need to work to support the household, but women often fail to capitalise on their true potential as they lack training and basic financial literacy.
Women face major constraints when it comes to access to opportunity; social norms and family constraints, make job prospects harder for women as they don’t have training or business prospects.
Kashf Foundation, established in 1999, specialises in microfinance in Pakistan, specifically targeting women from low income communities. Kashf Foundation focuses on enhancing the role that women can play in improving the economic status of their families by building their entrepreneurship skills through access to business loans; improving their financial management skills through workshops and reducing family level contingencies by providing micro-insurance services. A prominent partner of Kashf in its endeavours is The Coca-Cola Foundation.
To know more about the Kashf Foundation and its partnership with Coca-Cola we had a discussion with Kashf Strategic Communication Manager Zainab Saeed.
Question: Could you please tell us briefly about Kashf Foundation?
Zainab Saeed: Kashf Foundation is the first specialised microfinance institution in Pakistan to demonstrate the business case for investing in low-income households, especially women. Kashf is the market leader with regards to promotion women’s entrepreneurship and has set the stage for women’s inclusion into microfinance. Since its inception Kashf has been on the cutting edge of innovation and was the first microfinance institution in Pakistan to introduce life insurance. It has become operationally self-sustaining, borrow on-lending funds from commercial sources, mainstream an appraisal backed individual lending program for low-income women in Pakistan and roll-out a microfinance plus approach. Kashf provided micro-credit, health insurance, life insurance, financial education trainings, business management and development trainings, networking support, gender justice trainings, social theatre and vocational trainings. Kashf has presence in all four provinces of Pakistan through a network of over 183 branches and 25 services centres. Since its inception, Kashf Foundation has cumulatively disbursed over 2.7 million loans amounting to over $440 million. It has over 2,000 staff with a field staff gender ratio of over 50 per cent females which is one of the best for South Asia.
Q: How did the Kashf Foundation’s partnership with Coca-Cola come about?
ZS: Coca-Cola has a vibrant CSR program and focuses on women economic empowerment. Coca-Cola has a vision of empowering five million women by 2020. Kashf has been working specifically for the economic empowerment of women for almost two decades. The partnership, hence, was very organic. We started with a small grant from Coca-Cola and then graduated to larger grants.
Q: What are the key elements of this partnership?
ZS: The Coca-Cola Company helps Kashf provide access to credit to low-income women entrepreneurs that want to start up a new business or expand an existing one. Coca-Cola also invests in some training and development programs, e.g., in the past Coca-Cola has supported entrepreneurship development trainings with loan beneficiaries that receive Coca-Cola funding, Coca-Cola supported a maternal health-care and reproductive health training last year, and this year Coca-Cola will be supporting Kashf to implement life skills trainings with youth from low-income households.
Q: How many women have benefitted from this project?
ZS: In 2015 the Coca-Cola Company has approved a Corporate Social Responsibility grant of USD100,000 to Kashf Foundation to empower low-income female entrepreneurs through the provision of micro-credit loans. Over a partnership that began in 2010, the Coca-Cola Company has to date provided support of $381,000 to invest in the expansion of financial services to low-income women. As a result of this impact investment, in the past four years Kashf Foundation has been able to provide capital to over 1,400 women directly and 1,941 women through re-investment to repeat microfinance clients. With this new grant Kashf will be able to fund 300 low-income female entrepreneurs to set-up and/or expand current businesses. Moreover, Kashf will also invest this money into training 200 young individuals studying in low-cost private schools in Lahore on life-skills building and awareness raising sessions. Kashf will also undertake a business plan competition with these students to espouse entrepreneurial acumen amongst these students.
Q: How do you monitor the success of these women-borrowers?
ZS: Kashf tracks the success of women borrowers through multiple mechanisms – i) operational staff undertake monthly visits to check-in on the status of loan use and health of the business clients have invested in, ii) when the client applies for a repeat loan Kashf re-assesses the cash-flows of the business and household to monitor changes, (iii) Kashf undertakes periodic impact assessment studies both internally and through external assessors.
Q: Would you say that Coca-Cola is a role model corporate citizen, in terms of contributing to socio-economic development of the less privileged?
ZS: Corporate Social Responsibility denotes a company’s sense of responsibility towards the community and the environment – while some companies only pay lip-service to the idea – there are few like Coca-Cola that have gone beyond compliance to really choose projects, and work with organisations, with meaningful impact.
Q: Could you share an outstanding success story with us?
ZS: An outstanding success story is of Shahida Hameed who had opened a beauty parlour with a loan of Rs30,000 that Kashf has given to her from the Coca-Cola grant. Her story is shared below.
Shahida Hameed
Shahida Hameed is one such woman who realised that her husband’s income was not enough to sustain the household and she should do something to support her family. She is one of the beneficiaries of the Coca-Cola grant given to Kashf for women empowerment.
Q: How the idea of becoming an entrepreneur came into your mind?
Shahida Hameed: I live in Attoki Awan in Lahore. I have three children; one girl and two boys. My husband, Hameed, is an electrician and he used to be the sole earner in the house. Unfortunately luck has not been on our side; and Hameed has had trouble finding work. The household’s income was not enough to meet expenses and our family was suffering due to dependence on Hameed’s income. I realised the importance of contributing to the household income, but unfortunately did not have any skills which I could utilise to set-up a small business. With three young children and household responsibilities, it was also impossible for me to do any sort of job. It was then that the idea of becoming an entrepreneur struck me. I had been assisting my sister in law at her beauty parlour, and I felt I should set up my own parlour, but for that I needed access to credit and undertake a beautician training to polish my skills.
Q: Tell us something about you and your relationship with Kashf.
SH: When the idea of becoming an entrepreneur was emerging in my mind, I found out from a neighbour about Kashf Foundation and its vocational training program. I enrolled myself for the beautician training course and successfully completed the four-month diploma. After I completed the diploma, I contacted the Kashf office for a loan to set up a beauty parlour in my house. As a result of a PKR30,000 loan from Kashf, I am now a proud co-owner of a beauty parlour which I have set up in my home with my sister-in-law. I feel Kashf has been a god-send, thanks to Kashf I have my own beauty parlour today and I can make a positive contribution to the development of my household. The organisation not only equipped me with the necessary skills to set up my enterprise but also provided me access to credit, without which it would have been impossible for me to establish my own parlour.
Q: How has the loan helped you in supporting your family?
SH: With the PKR30,000 loan I got from Kashf, I have been able to establish a beauty parlour in my home with my sister-in-law; something I had been aspiring to do for a really long time but limited financial resources always restrained me. The parlour has been running successfully and I am currently able to earn around Rs1,000 on a daily basis and even more, close to holidays and festivals such as Eid. With the added income, we are now better positioned to meet our household expenses and the needs of our children. My children can now go to a better school and I can provide them better health facilities. I don’t have to ignore their small desires now, which I previously did due to limited finances.
Q: How you manage to run the business, and was it tough to make it self-sustaining?
SH: The beauty parlour I have set up is the co-ownership of me and my sister-in-law. I have secluded an area in my house for the parlour, which makes it easier for me to manage my house and the business. I do not have to commute for long hours to reach my workplace and neglect my house and children. The assistance provided by my sister-in-law has been extremely beneficial and eases my burden. At times when my children are not well or need my attention, she takes care of the clients alone. Setting up a new enterprise is indeed a tough job, but when you have the support from organisations like Kashf and your family, nothing remains impossible. Initially the business earnings were slow and I had to spread the word in my community regarding my parlour before the revenues could get a boost. Thankfully, our religious festival of Eidul Fitr arrived, on which my sales increased two folds and it was then the word spread regarding my parlour and women from other communities also came to me for services.
Q: How has your development helped you in society?
SH: I feel after becoming an entrepreneur I have been able to elevate my economic status as a woman. I have become far more enabled to make informed financial decisions than before and have now developed an awareness of personal financial issues and choices. My household has become a real example of complete participation and partnership of both women and men and I feel the need to end gender discrimination persisting in our society, give women equal opportunities and elevate the socio-economic condition of women living in low-income communities. Women in my area look up to me as a symbol of strength and independence. I feel I am far more respected than before and women approach me for advice on becoming financially independent and contributing to the household income. It makes me really proud of myself and I now walk in my community with my head raised higher than before.
Q: Do you think now you are more empowered to take your own decisions for the betterment of your family?
SH: I strongly believe in the concept that Kashf supports, which states that women are at the centre of a household and an educated and empowered woman is definitely able to contribute more towards the health, safety, education and well-being of her children, which in turn leads to a healthy household. I believe I have become the catalyst for positive change and my success has extensively benefitted my family.
Q: Do you have any plans for giving a boost to your business?
SH: I wish to make my beauty parlour the biggest one in the area. I plan on attending advanced level skills trainings in the future and expand my parlour and provide an array of services to the clients. With my enhanced financial decision making capacity and optimisation of financial choices, I’ll reinvest my profits into my business in order to expand it.
Fahad Qadir is the director public affairs and communication of Coca-Cola Pakistan Afghanistan region and is responsible for company’s all CSR initiatives. We spoke to him about Coca-Cola-Kashf partnership.
Q: Why did Coca-Cola partner with KASHF Foundation, focusing only women centric project?
Fahad Qadir: At the core of our approach to sustainability in Pakistan is the vision that our business must create shared value. The benefits of our business must accrue not only to our shareholders, but also to our diverse stakeholders – consumers, business partners, our upstream and downstream supply chain and local communities and civil society at large. Our mission is to refresh the world, to inspire moments of optimism and happiness and create value and make a difference. Our sustainability strategy is the very ethos of our Vision Mission Values as through community development, water stewardship programs, sustainable agriculture we are creating value, inspiring people and at the same refreshing the world a drink at a time. We believe that to be successful we must earn our social license. At Coca-Cola we believe that women are pillars for our business, and in order for our business to grow we must enhance skills, abilities and competencies of women in our system, as well the women from our communities and in our value chain. We are cognizant of the women in our society and in order to enhance their livelihoods we partnered with Kashf Foundation; a leading microfinance institution of Pakistan. The program aims to alleviate poverty by providing a suite of high quality affordable financial and non-financial services to low income households, especially women, in order to build their capacity and enhance their economic role.
Q: We have heard that Coca-Cola globally wants to empower five million women by 2020 – could you please talk about that further?
FQ: In 2010, Muhtar Kent, CEO, The Coca-Cola Company pledged to empower five million women by 2020 throughout Coca-Cola’s global business system. This pledge capitalises on the Company’s presence in over 200 countries and its business model which relies on millions of small-scale distributors and retailers, many of whom are women. Keeping the global commitment of empowering women economically in line, The Coca-Cola Export Corporation Pakistan commenced collaboration with Kashf Foundation and undertook a seismic program to empower women via micro-finance loans (soft loans) in 2011.
This program recognises that women play a pivotal role in the local economy and need to be supported; while most women have the business skills and ideas to run small micro-entrepreneurial ventures they lack access to capital that can help them set these up despite the small scale of the potential businesses. Additionally, even after setting up businesses women entrepreneurs face challenges in expanding their business, diversifying and increasing scope. The program aims to provide access to female entrepreneurs that are interested in setting up new businesses and expanding already existing ones.
Over time this relationship has culminated into one of most meaningful impact investments into the economic empowerment of low-income women entrepreneurs in Pakistan. Through this program we have been able to provide micro-finance loans to a large number of women entrepreneurs for business expansion. This includes loan funded directly in the grant year and loan finances through the repayment of the original grant. In 2013, Pakistan was officially recognised as part of the Company’s global commitment.
Q: Do you plan to take the partnership further? And what does that entail?
FQ: We aim to scale up this project every year till 2020. This year we also added a health training program for our female beneficiaries to equip them with basic reproductive health training. For the next five years we aim to evolve the program by empowering young females by giving them further health training and reproductive health care as well as provide the youth with life skills focusing on financial education, entrepreneurship, dealing with stresses in life, learning about critical thinking and compassion. This will not only ensure these females to be upright citizens of the world but will play a decisive role in our future generations.
Q: Is this the only CSR project undertaken by Coca-Cola in Pakistan or you are engaged in some other projects?
FQ: We aim to make a positive difference in the world through re-designing the way we work and live, we consider sustainability as part of everything we do.
Our Sustainability framework – what we call “Me, We, World” – is our shared vision for how we can work together to create social value and make a positive difference for the consumers and communities we serve. We consider sustainability as part of everything we do. We have an extremely diverse CSR portfolio that focuses on different aspects such as water and environment conservation, education, women empowerment and sustainable agriculture.
