…grab the audience with a thrilling, lascivious title, I always say.
So it may not be titillating but we are all sincerely very excited about our new comprehensive financial reporting system. The YP has grown a lot since it started as a book drive by a few college students five years ago, and we were badly in need of a revamping of our bookkeeping system. It’s especially important we have impeccable finances because we provide financial services… in fact, for most of the women who participate in our microfinance program, we are the closest thing they have to a bank. Capital is constantly cycling from the YP to our microlending client groups and back again. That’s a lot of transactions per quarter, and it gets complicated.
Enter Leslie Nivole Lowe, the Peace Corps volunteer assigned to work in Yonso as of last fall. Nivole has been working with the YP staff in Ghana and Nick (in the US) to (1) ensure we’re using best practices with our finances and (2) train the Ghana staff on how to use the software needed to manage the books. We’re almost there, and we couldn’t have done it without her. Once we have a system in place to comprehensively manage all of our finances, the Ghana staff will take control of day-to-day management of the books and Nivole will begin working on increasing the sustainability of our programs.
