Archive for October, 2009
Halloween in Cusco
By Sheethal Shobowale, KF9, Peru
In Cusco, Peru, Halloween is celebrated in full force. It kinda feels like home (side note: home for me is Brooklyn, New York). Back in New York, I usually put some pumpkins on my stoop and make some curried pumpkin soup. This year, Cynthia McMurry (Kiva’s Field Support Specialist in South America) and I are going to carve a zapallo and make some soup. So it will feel like home!
Here are some photos from Halloween in Cusco -
I’ll add more over the weekend when I see people dressed up and out trick ‘o treatin’… Hopefully I’ll get to see some cute little kids dressed up like pumpkins.
Happy Halloween from Cusco, Peru!
Celebrate Halloween by lending to Kiva borrowers.
Sheethal Shobowale is currently serving as a Kiva Fellow in Cusco, Peru with Asociación Arariwa
2 comments 31 October 2009
Why We Should Debate Loan Expiration
By Suzy Marinkovich, KF 8/9
As you may have seen, over the past couple of months Kiva has seen its first loans expire on the site. Currently, I am in my eighth week of working with a brand-new Kiva partner, CIDRE, an MFI specializing in agriculture and livestock loans in Bolivia. I mention this because I’ve noticed a significant portion of the loans that have expired or are close to expiration are from MFIs in Bolivia. I realize my opinion is skewed by having spent only a handful of days at Kiva headquarters followed by 5 months at two Kiva partners in South America. As a result, I don’t have really have a great vision from the top – I don’t understand all the organizational elements in place to keep Kiva sustainably rolling. I am just going to call it like I see it now, sun-drained from a long day spent on grueling rural roads, visiting incredibly inspiring Kiva borrowers and successful social projects CIDRE has had a hand in.
My understanding of the premise behind loan expiration is that it allows for Kiva to be more of a marketplace – where instead of making decisions on the end of Kiva, they are made on the end of the MFI and the funding choice is up to the lenders. Thus, the website itself is designed to be like an Ebay for microloans, an intermediary between funders and the funded.
Here is my reasoning for why I personally believe the expiration of loans on Kiva could be detrimental:
1(a). To make an analogy with the child-sponsorship model (please bear with me as it’s stretch): imagine a marketplace for sponsoring children’s school loans, with the exact same design as Kiva. At this hypothetical site, lenders like us could lend to cover school fees for children that would pay for middle or high school (in many countries, attending said schools requires paying school fees). Children’s photos and biographies are thus posted to this hypothetical site, and we treat it like a marketplace. Then, as the site expands and more loans are posted, certain kids aren’t being funded – their loans expire on this site. Then, you pull up the pages of all the children whose loans expired, and they are all kids who aren’t cute or aren’t fitting our notion of how a needy child should look. As you can see, this is unfairly discriminant.
28 comments 30 October 2009
No Short Cuts to the Top of a Palm-tree
By Ibrahim Oumarr Jalloh, Kiva Coordinator, Salone Microfinance Trust, Sierra Leone
There is a lot of wealth at the top of a palm-tree. Many would like to reap the benefits it possesses.
The palm-wine taper wants the palm-wine, the palm-oil producer wants the palm-oil, the mats designers and broom makers want the palm-leaves – even the snakes and rats want to feed from the palm fruits.
There are no rules about who is allowed to try to climb and reach the top of the palm tree to get what they want, but it is clear, because of the difficulty of getting to the top, that adhering to the policies of the palm-tree is crucial to success. There should be no thoughts about possible cunning ways to get to the top – one needs to begin from below and then work to the top. When one reaches there, one can reap whatever benefit there is.
8 comments 30 October 2009
The Show Me Game!
By Prem Thomas, KF9, Manila, Philippines
One of the great parts of being a Kiva Fellow in the Philippines is the access it gives you to other countries with relatively inexpensive domestic and international flights. Cebu Pacific is one of a handful of budget airlines in the Philippines that allow you to fly internationally to places like Hong Kong, Taipei and Vietnam for around $100 USD round-trip. You can also fly domestically for less than $40 USD which already came in handy when visiting a branch about a 45 minute flight away.
My favorite part about flights on Cebu Pacific is the Show Me Game. After take-off, flight attendants ask passengers to show them certain items for prizes:
4 comments 29 October 2009
Les bijoux en toc au service du développement économique ?
By Thomas Gold, KF9 Dominican Republic
For English version, click on “(more…)”, then scroll down.
Après quelques jours dans la province de Samanà, une péninsule qui se situe au Nord-est du pays, je n’ai pu m’empêcher de m’interroger sur l’utilité réelle et les bénéfices concrets du travail réalisé par mon institution hôte et surtout par la microfinance en général.
En effet, après avoir passé ces premières journées à faire de longs trajets, dans des conditions difficiles sur les quelques routes bosselées et mal entretenues de la péninsule pour assister aux réunions bimensuelles de remboursement des prêts, j’ai constaté que la majorité des commerces tenus par les clients d’Esperanza, sont en tout points identiques : il s’agit de femmes qui vendent de manière ambulante des vêtements, chaussures et bijoux fantaisie (en toc), et dont la situation n’évolue pas vraiment, même après plusieurs cycles de prêts.
Different ways to get from one borrowers meeting to another
4 comments 29 October 2009
Three Earthquakes Spell Climate Change and perhaps the Wrath of God
by Agnes Chu, KF9, Samoa
Since the infamous earthquake that caused the tsunami in Samoa on Sept. 29, there have been three more earthquakes felt here. They are minor but no less nerve-wracking. As the ground jolts for a few seconds, people, including senior management, rush out of the office and some stay in the hills for the night. When a harmless earthquake struck near Vanuatu, an island 1,400 miles away, Apia was evacuated for a couple of hours; tsunami drills are certain to be a fixture in Samoa’s future. Ghost stories also abound around the island (Samoans are very superstitious). I accompanied a centre manager on field visits to areas of the coast wrecked by the tsunami, because she had heard those stories of taxi drivers picking up the ghosts of tsunami victims, was afraid and needed company. She also insisted that I keep an eye on the ocean as she barreled down the road. (Her fear, though, was well-justified by an earthquake which occurred during our trip. Fortunately, we were at a loan centre away from the ocean and the earth shook for only a couple of seconds.) Archbishop Alapati Mataeliga has declared that there is “great fear in the country.” Samoa is on edge.
Traditionally, Samoans view the ocean as peaceful and giving. They struggle to reconcile the events of Sept. 29. Many explanations are offered and discussed in circles. For some, the tsunami and the recent geological unrest in the Pacific are an affirmation of climate change and a wake-up call for awareness and action from the rest of the world. A low-lying island, Samoa is at high risk when seawaters rise and storms come. Many houses lie on the edge of the coast, which is ringed by a little seawall made of stacked rocks only three feet high in most spots. It resembles decoration more than a barrier. (Most of the seawall is privately owned and built, another reason of why it is so tiny.)
A typical house and seawall along the coast of Samoa
Reconstruction of the seawall near the wharf which was damaged. Note the demolished house in the background.
13 comments 28 October 2009
getting there
By Shereef Zaki, KF9, Perú
Cultural issues surrounding privacy can be one of Kiva’s biggest challenges regarding implementation in the field. Not everyone wants their photo publicized and many hold suspicions when it comes time to sign a waiver. But I think the biggest challenge for Kiva is far more prosaic. The act of getting to a borrower can be an ordeal in and of itself, and things just got more ‘adventurous’ at my MFI.
EDPYME Alternativa has created a new loan product – called Capital Semilla or Seed Capital – destined specifically for clients who will become Kiva borrowers. Loans of $300 or less at a low interest rate are now offered to rural entrepreneurs. Finding them for the interview generally involves a unique combination of collective vans, collective taxis, mototaxis and walking aimlessly through fields – for hours.
And the journeys take us through landscapes that are beautiful whether through unforgivingly desolate desert or knee high cornfields with palm and locust trees spotting the hazy windless horizons.
For your viewing pleasure I have chronicled one day’s worth of transportation that Manuel (the Kiva Assistant) and I embarked on in order to find just 4 borrowers.
Photos after the jump… (more…)
2 comments 28 October 2009
“Nuestra Capital Semilla” (Our Seed Money)
By Sheethal Shobowale, KF9, Peru
My first loan disbursement outside of the Asociación Arariwa office took place in San Sebastian, an area of Cusco about 15 minutes away from the office.
This group meeting was my ideal picture of group microfinance. Banco Comunal de Maria Auxiliadora is a group of 11 low-income women from Cusco, engaged all all different types of businesses, from cosmetic and grocery sales to artesanía. They had failed to make their repayments on time in their last loan cycle but this time, Valentina, their loan officer was determined for them to succeed.
(more…)
20 comments 28 October 2009
No More Genocide
By Gavin Sword, KF9 Rwanda
It is true that internationally, Rwanda is most known for the horrific events of 1994; a genocide that claimed the lives of more than 800,000 of its people. There is no satisfactory way to comprehend what happened here. Yet as a testament to the human spirit – life in Rwanda carries on. (more…)
16 comments 28 October 2009
Tuning Out and Coming To…in a Chicken Coop
By Jessica Chervin, KF9 Togo
Yesterday evening, West Africa made me giddy.
I have been in Togo for almost five months, and in West Africa for almost nine. Here, my senses are never neutral. The most lovely moments are tempered by inconvenience. My daily moto rides to and from Microfund are at once thrilling and relaxing, but the soot and smell of burning garbage, the potholes that make Lome’s boulevards feel like urban mogul fields, and the passage by open landfills smack in the middle of the capital, tinge the experience with unpleasantness. Sensory and experiential overload and deprivation are not mutually exclusive. On those moto rides, I am equally attuned to what my heightened senses do not perceive: safety, calm, balance, and the ability to breathe deeply. The expatriate experience in West Africa is one of inescapable contrast. Everything is more colorful, too spicy, impossibly beautiful, unbearably filthy—but never quite normal. If one reacts every time to each of these stimuli, one is quickly exhausted. So, with time, in order to complete the marathon, one has to find a sustainable cruising speed, some semblance of equilibrium in a world that is anything but balanced—or, for that matter, equal.
Tchilabalo in his coop (for the grown hens. The chicks were kept separately across the way).
9 comments 28 October 2009
RSS - Posts