45· Women Suppporting Women with Malin Rosenkvist
Podcast show notes
In this episode, we’re chatting with the incredible Malin Rosenkvist, Director of Fundraising at the MicroLoan Foundation. The foundation provides essential business loans to women across Sub-Saharan Africa, empowering them to generate an income and support their families.
Malin shares how a chance meeting in a bar led her from the stage to Uganda, where she began making a real impact in the world. We explore her journey of working in international politics, development economics, and the hard choices she’s faced along the way.
We also touch on the emotional toll of working in the charity sector, building resilience, and finding purpose in making a difference. Plus, hear how a £25 loan can transform lives in the world’s poorest communities.
Here are the highlights
Motivation and Challenges in the International Development Sector (3:08)
Staying Positive and Resilient in the Face of Poverty (4:37)
Introduction to Coachathon (8:02)
Impact of Microloans on Women's Lives (9:29)
Success Stories and Long-Term Impact (15:08)
How to Get Involved and Support the Microloan Foundation (20:09)
Connect with Malin here
Find out more about the Coachathon here
Book a session with Ruth here
Find out about the impact of the Microloan Foundation here
Get the 5 Day Resilience Kickstarter
Connect with Ruth
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Ruth
Malin, welcome to Frustrated and Exhausted. It's really great to have you here with us today. Thank you for taking part.
Malin
It’s an absolute pleasure to be here.
Ruth
I've given everybody a little bit of a brief intro to you and what you do, but not really much more than that. Could you just share with us a little bit about your career so far and what drew you into this sector in particular,
Malin
Sure. So at this point in time, as your listeners already know, I am the director of fundraising and communications at Microloan Foundation, so I basically work in the international development sector and was set up as a charity here in the UK. So I've been working in the international development sector since around 2006/2007 and it started in a slightly surprising way, because I was, at the time, working as an actress, and not a very good actress. So I also had to have a job during the night, which was working in a bar. I was a little bit fed up, because, like I said, I wasn't getting a lot of work and I wasn't able. I had to work in hospitality at the same time. So I met a woman in the bar, and I told her, I'm a little bit bored. Something needs to happen, you know, and I've always wanted to go and, you know, do some voluntary work and see if I can do a little bit of have a positive impact in the world. And she said, Oh, you know what, I live in Uganda. Why don't you come and see me? I've got a couple of organizations that need help, and could really do with, with someone to drive a few projects. So I resigned, and a month later, I moved to Uganda. So that's how it all began.
Ruth
That's quite a start, quite a start to a career.
Malin
Yeah, yeah. So I then, whilst I was living in Uganda, I then applied to do a degree in international politics and development economics. So I got back to the UK and did that at School of Oriental and African Studies. And then I started working in the sector. And I've been very, very lucky because I started, you know, I shifted my career when I was late 20s, early 30s. So, you know, it was I already had a lot of experience. And this goes to show that transferable skills is everything - you never know where life is going to take you. And mine took me here, which I'm really, really thrilled about. Yeah, I do have to say, I'm I genuinely love my job. I get to do really amazing stuff, and that's really lucky, because that has definitely not always been the case. So, yeah,
Ruth
What has kept you in the sector? So my master's is in development economics, and I've done a bit of work around that, and used to work for the Foreign Office, and did a lot of work with the Department for International Development and I know that that the third sector can be extremely challenging In terms of career. What's kept you there?
Malin
There are a number of reasons. I would say it is not your salary. That's you know. Instead, what I get from my work is I get a sense of actually doing something that I genuinely care about. I'm not trying to sell anyone anything. I'm trying to actually have a positive impact. And I know it sounds really cliche, but it makes me, it makes me want to get up in the morning. It makes me get excited about work on a Sunday evening.
Ruth
Yeah, you know it is a cliche, but, well, probably a cliche for a reason, because it's important.
Malin
Yeah, absolutely.
Ruth
That sense of purpose really, really matters, doesn't it? And without it, you don't want to be sitting there on Sunday night dreading Monday morning,
Malin
Exactly. I think when you work in this sector, well, for me anyway, I choose very, very, very carefully who I work for, and because it's that is what's going to drive you. You need to work for an organization where you have done your research and you know that this is an impactful organization. You know that what I do is going to make a difference, because otherwise I can go and work in the corporate world instead.
Ruth
Gven the nature of what the Microloan Foundation does and what you will have seen earlier in your career, I've no doubt as well, how do you stay positive in the face of what must be sometimes quite an overwhelming amount of poverty and struggle that you're seeing?
Malin
Yeah, it's a very, very important question, I think, for anyone who works in in the charity sector, any kind of work in the charity sector or in care, when you have for anyone who's a carer as well, and I think it was really tough at the start of it. Quite early on in my career, I raised funds and I worked with a team of doctors in Uganda to set up surgery camps for disabled children, and part of the process that was for me to actually be part of the team and decide, okay, how do we spend the money? Because we have a finite amount of money, and we need to ensure that whoever gets the surgery actually has an environment that they live in and a family that can take care of them, because otherwise they will most likely not make it through, because if their wounds are not, you know, looked after, yeah, so having that, having to sit and make those decisions, it's that's probably, that's probably one of the most harrowing experiences I've had to have in terms of having to really hold it together, because the one thing to remember is I can't sit there and break down because then I need to go home and change jobs. It's as brutal as that, because that is not helping anyone. So you have to really, really build up that resilience and think, Okay, if this again, cliche, but if I'm helping, if I'm having a positive impact on one person's life. That's what I've gotta bring with you, because otherwise you cannot get through especially when you're working really, really close to to, yeah, the end beneficiary.
Ruth
I can imagine that the risk of secondary trauma and is quite high in terms of sort of taking on what other people are experiencing. And as you say there, you know, it's hard. I find it hard to imagine myself making those sorts of decisions. And I can only imagine what that took to stay composed and focused in the face of that, so thank you for sharing.
Malin
You have to remember that you aren’t helping anyone if you are breaking down, yeah, pitying people, it ultimately, because it almost feels, it feels self-indulgent, you know. And it is just not being respectful to other people to do that, and that's hard to not be self-indulgent in that sense, but you build up that resilience over time.
Ruth
That is impressive. I have to say, we've obviously met, because I'm taking part this year in Coachathon, which is being run through the Microloan Foundation in partnership with the UK International Coaching Federation. Can you just share with everybody a little bit about how that came about and what it does?
Malin
So let me start at what it actually is. So the coach AThon is a 24 hour coaching festival where hundreds, hundreds of coaches around the world are donating their time for free in return for a donation to the Microloan Foundation. So it is a fundraising event, but it is like a win win win type of event. So it's taking place on the ninth of October this year, and it all started as a result of one of our amazing supporters, Sandra Pennington, who is a coach, and who, in the middle of the night had an epiphany and said, I need to raise some money for Microloan. This is how I'm going to do it. And then she came up with a whole concept, and the idea of basically doing it's like a coaching marathon. Yeah, 24 hours, and it's the fifth year running this year, and we've raised over £90,000 through this event so far. Yeah, so impacted a lot of lives, helped a lot of women build businesses and grow businesses and start small businesses in Malawi, Zambian, Zimbabwe. So, yeah, fantastic.
Ruth
What does that that kind of money do for someone who's, you know, living in, impoverished countries. And for a woman who is maybe on her own, or, you know, what does that sort of loan do for her?
Malin
I think it's really important to look at the loan itself, which is, you know, our loans to start a business in Malawi. They're starting at just £25. So it's very small - we are called Microloan Foundation for a reason, right? And these are geared to setting up a business, so it's not a consumption loan. I think what's really important to see in this is that alone, in itself, is not going to change anyone's life. Just giving someone £25 as a loan and that's it, that's not going to be a game changer for anyone. However, when you pair this with really extensive training, so before the women get access to a loan, they get seven training sessions on financial literacy, on how to run a business, on savings, and the importance of savings for a rainy day, of how to manage your money, how to do a business plan, all of this kind of stuff. And I think putting that giving for anyone who's ever started a business, or indeed running a business, I mean, having support and training is pretty, essential, right?
Ruth
You're preaching to the converted here!
Malin
So they get that support beforehand, because many of these women that we serve are living below the extreme poverty line, so many of them can't read or write. But we don't want that to stop them. We want to make it accessible for them. So all of this training is done through role play, through visual aids, through dance and through song, just to make sure that it's accessible to them. Because they can't write things down, you know? And then once they get that loan, and this is really essential, and again, choir preaching, all that kind of stuff, they get ongoing support. So we work with groups of women. They get support from each other. So group of five women come together, they're jointly responsible for the loan, for each other's loans, and for the repayments, but also they are connected to a wider group of micro entrepreneurs that are supporting each other and provide peer to peer support, plus Microloan Foundation’s team members come in and then work with the women and provide them with extra training and support, troubleshooting all that kind of stuff throughout the loan cycle, so they're supported all the way through. And I think that's really the key to success. This is the reason we have, like, over 97% of our loans are repaid in full.
Ruth
Wow, that's a rate a lot of banks would love to have!
Malin
Yeah, I know, yeah.
Ruth
That's impressive. I love that kind of idea of, you know, the women being supported, I guess, at this end of things, by other women, but also obviously amongst each other. I mean, I know as a business owner how important support is from other business owners, those kind of conversations that you can just go - Are you finding this at the moment? Yes, I am as well. And what have you done when this has cropped up? Just that sharing of knowledge and experience makes a huge, huge difference, and that sense of kind of being lifted a little bit along the way.
Malin
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And it's also this thing of having role models, because when you get a whole bunch of women together, they're really good at supporting each other. So, you know, it's part of the model has been developed over 20 years in terms of how we do this. We've made many, many mistakes along the line, and we are still learning how to most effectively and efficiently support the women that we serve, you know. And we talk about our beneficiaries as clients. We don't talk about them as beneficiaries because we, we, we talk about them as clients because you're providing service, and we need to, yeah, and they it's also really important to remember that, you know, I talk about the poverty levels and levels and that it's really they, they live in a very different context. But these women are hardworking, they're driven, they're ambitious, they're bloody brilliant, you know, Yeah,
funny. They're engaging. There's a lot of ambition in amongst our clients.
Ruth
So you know, to us sitting here, you know, you hear £25, and you think, what can that do? And obviously there's all then the support around about that as well to get people through. What kind of transformations do you see through these loans and what that does for a woman?
Malin
Let me give you an example of a woman. So one amazing woman, incredible sense of humor, whom I met in Malawi is called Maritha. I first met her in 2016. She was then newly divorced, four children, and things were pretty tough for her. At the time, she took out an agricultural loan from the Microloan Foundation to grow maize and soya. So many of the women we serve, it's agrarian economies that we operate in. So many of them are smallholder farmers who work within the food system. So she was growing maise and soy, and I think, I can't remember exactly what her loan was, but I think it was £34 right? And for that, she could buy inputs, so seed and fertilizer. But what we did is we gave her loads of training and agricultural training specifically so she didn't have to buy fertilizer, because she could create her own organic fertilizer, you know. And it was, it was things were really tough for her, because before she joined Microloan and she was struggling to get enough yields to feed a family for the rest of the year, and she was only growing maize, so they weren't actually having yet, a cash crop, yeah, it was really tough. The funny thing is, when I met her, we also clicked straight away. Some people you just click with, and she was just - we were laughing. And just having fun, it was just great. But she was telling me things, things were really tough, and her kids often had to go to bed hungry. She had to pull her oldest daughter, out of school because she couldn't afford to pay the school fees, let alone the books and the shoes and the uniforms that they have that she needed.
I met Maritha again in 2023 so last year and saw what she did with she that little loan that she started with. She's kept on taking out more loans, other loans, growing her business. She now has double the size of farming land that she had before. She has set up a restaurant, so she's running an extra business, so if there are crop failure or issues with the farm, she still has something else to fall back on. Her oldest daughter, who had to drop out of school, is now a mother, and that's obviously not unusual in these countries. They have children very early, but she works in the restaurant, so she also has a job, you know, she's a job creator for members of her family and the wider community, and the other children are all in school and managing to get through school. You know, this is something they don't have to go hungry anymore. It's a major, major difference. And what's more, and this is also showing something about the impact and compassion of the women that we said this.
They had really tough lives themselves, but Maritha’s brother and his wife passed away from AIDS, yeah, only just about a year after I met her the first time. So she is now looking after their three children. And the youngest one was contaminated with HIV at birth from his mother. This is still very taboo, and it's also very expensive to try and travel to the local clinic. Even if you can get the anti-retrovirals for free, you still have to pay for the bus fare, however, the ride that you're going to get to the health clinic, but her business, and this is the impact, you know, her business, and the support that she's had from Microloan, mean she is able to set up and get a stable livelihood, it means that she can afford those, those travel journeys. She can look after that boy. He is healthy, he is happy. He's got a very low viral count. It's, you know, things for the family. And it could have been the very opposite for her daughter, for these orphan children, you know? Yeah, you know. But then you gotta remember Microloan and does a lot to make this happen, but in the end of the day, the agency is with these amazing women.
Ruth
That is really something. And it's, is this the impact on the next generation as well? You know? What will they go is those, and we always talk about this in coaching, you know, that kind of ripple effect that is this one small thing that turns into lots of other things. And you sort of think about the impact of that better education on the next generation coming through, and what that will do for them, and all of that from £34 effectively to begin with. It is quite something. And the real testament, I mean, what a big heart to sort of be going through all of that with their own children and trying to kind of build a business and feed everybody, and then to take on, you know, another three children is, you know.
So how can people, well, I mean, I could probably do this, but how can people get involved and help support your work?
Malin
So I would say, first of all, of course, get involved with a coaching session from Ruth. You're probably never going to get it as cheap for a coaching session! So I would say rush and go to the Coachathon website, or to the Microloan Foundation website, find the coachathon and basically get yourself booked in for the month of October to get a coaching session. And I'd also really, really for people who hasn't tried coaching, or even if you have, and you know that you how valuable it is getting. We also offer bulk buying sessions for teams. So if you're running a team and you feel that, okay, I actually want to give coaching to my team. Even if you're in a bigger corporate where you've got various layers of approval, you could probably expense 10 coaching sessions at 50 quid, a pop, um, and just get your team, give your team a really, really nice treat. There are, in addition to Ruth, there are, we have 220 coaches from all over the globe. So, you know, there are, there's definitely going to be something for everyone,
Ruth
Yes, somebody, somebody to suit everybody.. It's such a great opportunity. And I think you, if you're somebody who has been thinking about coaching but hasn't tried it yet, it's a great opportunity to do that in a really low risk way. See if it's for you, see what kind of thing might work for you. And I mean, most coaches are just really open to any topic you want to bring - it might be work, it might be life, it could be anything at all that you're grappling with at the moment and you want some support to think through. And you know, the win, win, win from this is, you know, the coaches get to do something good, and kind of feel good about that. Your donation makes a huge impact to the work of the Microloan Foundation. And if you think about £50 for a session, you know, that covers at least one loan plus a bit of support. And you know, possibly two. So you think about those individuals and those families that you're helping, and the longer term impact that that can have. That's got to be a win as well. And of course, you get the value from that coaching session itself, and one coaching session alone, I kid you not. If you come with the right mindset and, you know, the right approach to it. It can genuinely change your life in 45 minutes or an hour. So really think about kind of joining it's such a great thing. And I'm so so proud to be taking part this year.
Malin
We're so happy to have you. The calibre of the coaches that we have on board this year is just absolutely amazing.
Ruth
Yeah, there's super great names on there. So great. So good for you. I recognize when you talk about role models, Malin, thank you so much for coming and sharing some of those stories. And I think those messages about the resilience that you've had to have, you know, in terms of working in a sector, and the challenges that that can really bring, personally, the resilience of the women out there who are taking these loans and trying to really change their lives and the lives of their families and the future of the, you know, the next generations to come. It's, it's so inspiring. And you know, I think it's easy to sort of lose sight you when you're caught up in the busyness of your own life, of some of these things that kind of go on out there. And I think this is such a great opportunity for women to support other women out there. So thank you so thank you so much for your time. I found this a really inspiring conversation, and I'm off to go and push the Coachathon even more on my social media channels!
Malin
And thank you for taking part Ruth and and for helping us spread the word as well. Because, yeah, really excited to be on here.
Ruth
It's been a real pleasure. Thanks very much.
