Diana Negroponte: Coming Home To Friends

“I’m coming home to friends!” she beams as she steps out of the car, unmindful that the street, though paved, is uneven and the step up to the sidewalk is way too high, in a part of town rarely visited by anyone who does not live there. While her husband, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, wrestled with thorny issues of regional security and nuclear proliferation at the ASEAN Regional Forum, Diana Negroponte spent Wednesday morning in Barangay Lower Bicutan in Taguig City, visiting sari-sari stores, a junk shop, and other home enterprises that are the products of microfinance, a subject near and dear to her heart.

During her husband’s tour of duty in the Philippines in the mid-1990s as ambassador of the United States, Diana Negroponte had served on the Board of Trustees of TSPI Development Corporation, a non-stock, non-profit Christian-oriented organization that provides a broad range of services to the poor, particularly microfinance and capability building support for micro and small entrepreneurs.

Her visit to Manila last week – as her husband headed the US delegation to the ASEAN meetings, vice Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who flew to the Middle East – afforded her the opportunity to check up on the progress of TSPI’s activities and renew acquaintances with fellow workers in microfinance as well as its beneficiaries. Mrs. Negroponte, as a former trustee, is now a members of TSPI’s Board of Advisers.

TSPI – which stands for Tulay sa Pag-unlad Inc. or bridge to progress – espouses the “development vision…to provide the poor with opportunities to lead self-sufficient, dignified and responsible lives.”

Started in 1981 with a capital of only P3,000 and a client base of 25 small entrepreneurs, TSPI today serves over 150,000 clients through 67 branches all over Luzon, with a loan portfolio of over P500 million. Loans range from P5,000 to P200,000, with loan amounts increasing as clients build up and expand their enterprises. Repayment rate is 99 percent, and clients are 99 percent women, called “nanays” since most of them are mothers seeking to augment meager family incomes, although members who are not mothers are also called “nanay.” As an ecumenical Christian organization, TSPI places emphasis on values formation, which is the bedrock for all lending and enterprise activities.

 The first order of the day was an early morning visit to the Taguig branch, one of TSPI’s most dynamic branches with a loan portfolio over P19 million and a client base of over 3,300. At the small but neat office, Mrs. Negroponte engaged TSPI officers and staff in a lively exchange, with account officers sharing heart-warming stories of their work with clients and detailing how hard-won successes were carved out with perseverance and commitment.

At one point, when told that most female account officers were unmarried, Negroponte remarked, “I am married, but I’m also married to microfinance!” and added, “Your personal lives are as important as your clients.”

Before setting off, Mrs. Negroponte requested the staff to gather for a communal prayer, saying, “Things always start off better with a word of prayer.”

In requesting for the visit, Mrs. Negroponte had said that she did not want to merely sit in an office and watch an audio-visual presentation but preferred to go out and visit project sites. Despite security and other logistical concerns – the embassy contingent was very specific and very strict about arrangements – Mrs. Negroponte, accompanied by TSPI president Rene Cristobal, executive director Ruben de Lara, trustees Ched Kimwell and myself, operations manager Stella Escuadro, plus her staff and security detail augmented by Taguig police, set off through the narrow streets and even narrower lanes of Barangay Lower Bicutan, walking the winding alleyways where the cars could not possibly enter.

Wilma Sahirani welcomed us to her home-cum-store-cum-workshop, and it was a happy reunion because about 10 years ago, Mrs. Negroponte had visited her when she first took out a loan to start a small business sewing undergarments. At the time, both of them recalled, her house was hardly more than a shack, about a fourth of the size it is now. Today, Wilma manufactures undergarments in her second-floor workshop, employing up to six sewers, and also sells scrub suits and blouses, which she now subcontracts, at tiangges and outlets around Metro Manila.

Next stop was a meeting of a center consisting of 41 members. As in all meetings, this one started with prayer, and recitation of the TSPI creed and their commitment to its ideals. The members then took care of center business, including the unanimous approval of two special loans to members.

Two nanays then presented the products of their enterprise: first, homemade peanut butter and second, a very creative line of decor items and accessories, including an adjustable bracelet that Mrs. Negroponte proudly wore.

Percy Caampued then explained how her sari-sari store expanded to five “rolling stores,” bicycles with sidecars that she bought with a TSPI loan. The five men who daily take the stores on the road make a profit on what they sell, thus multiplying the effects of Percy’s entrepreneurial skills. With income from her business augmenting her husband’s salary, Percy proudly informed us that she could assure her children’s education – one is a second year nursing student, while the other is in high school.

Walking to our next stop, two little girls playing with paper dolls caught Mrs. Negroponte’s attention. The girls were quite shy and probably a bit overwhelmed at their blond playmate, who told them that “I used to do that when I was little.”

Next we talked trash with Nanay Divina, who not only provides neighbors with the chance to earn extra money from their trash but in the process recycles and helps the environment by practising responsible solid waste management.

Despite being away from the Philippines for over a decade, we felt that maybe Mrs. Negroponte still understood Filipino, because even though we were often slow or remiss in our translation duties, she seemed to understand the discussions and conversations – in Filipino – quite well.

Or perhaps there just isn’t any communication barrier between the hoi polloi and one so apparently immersed in development work, even if she is descended from the Duchess of Cleveland and the 4th Earl of Clarendon who had served as Queen Victoria’s Foreign Secretary; her mother too was a countess, and her father Sir Charles Villier was chairman of British Steel.

Mrs. Negroponte currently serves on the Board of Trustees of Opportunity International, an NGO dedicated to micro-credit lending and banking, and is a member of the Global Leadership Council of Habitat for Humanity, whose project in the country she visited as well. She is also currently a visiting fellow of foreign policy studies at the elite Brookings Institute, and is an adjunct professor of law at Fordham University.

The writer Stanley Karnow perhaps best described her when he said: “Wherever they went, he’d (John) do the political thing, and she’d hustle off to the barrios, the slums, the tough places. She was a one-woman Peace Corps. She’s absolutely formidable.”

No wonder she has friends to come home to wherever she goes.