Archive for January, 2010
thanks, San Francisco! with love, KF10
We are the tenth class of Kiva Fellows (KF10), and we graduated from Kiva Fellows training! Now we must implement all that we have been charged with over the last week. Before I upholding my end of that promise, I need to reflect on the impact that the Kiva Fellows experience has already had on my life.
But how do I craft the perfect, viral blog that will accurately represent myself, my Kiva community, and the community in which I will be working and living?
Continue Reading 30 January 2010 at 17:06 Kati Mayfield 5 comments
Welcome KF10!
Uploaded by Nicki Goh on behalf of all of KF9!
Rap vocals from Brian Kelly , KF9 Armenia and Bryan Goldfinger, KF9 Peru.
Well done on getting this far through the week of training in one piece, KF10! Have fun at graduation tonight and have safe onward trips to your next exciting adventure! ENJOY!
Looking at Microfinance Through Rose-Coloured Glasses
By Taylor Akin, KF9, Togo
There is a lot of hype surrounding microfinance. For some, microfinance is an effective tool used to promote large-scale poverty alleviation. For others, it is simply considered a way for moderately poor individuals to better their own situations. If you’re reading this blog, you likely fit somewhere on this spectrum of belief that microfinance does at least some good. While the degree to which microfinance impacts the lives of the poor is often debated, the hype remains fairly constant. But can microfinance really live up to the publicity that precedes it?
A (rare) smiling Kiva entrepreneur, Teko Kongo. Coming soon to Kiva.org!
I must admit that I too was a victim of this hype. I naively thought that my work as a Kiva Fellow would include listening to many heart-wrenching, life-changing stories of success and failure as a result of, or despite the efforts of microfinance. My friends at home often joked that I was off to “save the world.” (more…)
Kiva Fellows are all about the Schwag?
So I’m on day 4 out of a week-long Kiva Fellows training program that starts promptly at 8:00 a.m. straight through to 6:30 p.m. along with 28 other trainees from all over the world. We’re fighting off all kinds of sicknesses from being together 10+ hours a day (i.e. braving a rainy outdoor trolley ride around San Francisco, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder in the computer “sauna” room, and hi-fiving when our team scores on Kiva Jeopardy).
Echoes of Violence
By Rob Packer, KF10 Colombia
One of the things that attracts people to the Kiva Fellowship is the chance to visit places they would never visit otherwise. Over the past three weeks with the Fundación Mario Santo Domingo (FMSD), I’ve been to barrios in Bogotá, Barranquilla and Cartagena that I would never have visited otherwise. The alegría and friendliness of Kiva borrowers normally means that this is an overwhelmingly positive experience. However, there are other kinds of visits, often to poorer areas, and it’s this kind of visit that haunts you and enrages your sense of justice in the world. Wednesday of this week was my hardest day in four months as a Kiva Fellow.
Kiva Climbs the Ecuadorian Andes to Team Up With Its Newest Field Partner
by Josh Wilcox, KF10 Ecuador
Please join me in welcoming the latest Field Partner to the Kiva platform and third in Ecuador, Cooperativa San José! They are headquartered in the small village of San José de Chimbo and have 5 other branch offices within the Bolivar and Los Ríos provinces. Located in the heart of the country up in the Andes Mountains, Cooperativa San José offers various types of savings and credit products to its members.
Cooperativa San José will be working with Kiva to administer loans to their ventanillas rurales (group loans in the countryside). The majority of these borrowers works in agriculture and predominately grows corn, potatoes, beans, tomatoes, among other crops. Many also raise small animals or have a small store within their home to augment their income, since their harvests often do not provide them with adequate income to support their families. These farmers will also travel weekly to the fairs in the village to sell their grains, fruits, and vegetables.
Bali—Trouble in Paradise
By Nick Lewis, KF10 Indonesia
Ok FREEZE. What’s the first image that pops into your head when I say…….Bali.
Chances are it has very little to do with poverty and almost certainly has nothing to do with microfinance or the Kiva Fellows program. In fact, it probably doesn’t even have much to do with local Indonesians. When most people think about the “island of the gods”, as it is known in Indonesia, they picture honeymooners sipping exotic drinks while relaxing on pristine beaches, verdant rice terraces, or world-class surfers tackling some of the most famous breaks in existence. While Bali certainly deserves a place on a list of the world’s most beautiful locales, there is trouble in paradise.
Goodbye Nicas/Hello Ticos
By Meg Gray, KF9 Nicaragua, KF10 Costa Rica
Just two short weeks ago, I was going crazy trying to wrap up all of my projects at CEPRODEL, a Kiva Field Partner in Managua, Nicaragua and my first Kiva Fellows placement. Today I am settling in for day two at Fundación Mujer in San Jose, Costa Rica- my second Kiva Fellows placement. Right now the 12 weeks ahead of me seem like an amazingly long time, but I know from my work in Nicaragua that it is going to fly by, so I should hit the ground running.
Before I get cracking on my work plan, I want to introduce Fundación Mujer. (more…)
Parallels in Microfinance and Corporate America
By Alex Duong, KF9, Vietnam
A recent interview with John Hagel of my employer Deloitte sparked the idea for this blog entry (article here). According to Hagel, the US market is maturing to the point where solely focusing on product and process innovation have decreasing marginal returns. A good example is Microsoft Office or the iPod. At first, new products came out every 4-5 years. Now it seems the product line must be refreshed every 2-3 years. So what could serving the poor have in common with profit oriented businesses? It turns out there are plenty of parallels.
A few staff members of my MFI, TYM Fund
Moriré con las botas puestas (I’ll die with my boots on)
By Jeremy Lapedis, KF9, Guatemala
A violinist and pianist set the ambiance along with a slide show of pictures. Everyone attended FAPE’s 25th anniversary celebration: the board of directors, the general assembly, representatives from FAPE’s international partners (I was Kiva’s representative), and FAPE’s director, accountant, and lawyer. Moriré con las botas puestas. That’s what FAPE’s vice president of the board of directors said while giving an award to the president of the board.
While the vice president continued, I sat in my suit waiting to receive Kiva’s award. I couldn’t help but thinking how lavish this celebration was. How none of the loan officers had been invited to the ceremony. How there was hardly a mention of entrepreneurs aside from the pictures. How we were patting ourselves on the back, almost forgetting the people on the ground–the reason we were in microfinance in the first place. (more…)
Community Loans: Another Level of Microfinance
By Josh Weinstein, KF9 Philippines
I spent the last week with the research department touring the region, tagging along on a market research survey. On the last day, we were driving through a coastal town when the paved road turned to dirt. According to the driver and director of the research department at NWTF, when the road turns to dirt, you know you are headed in the right direction. Sure enough, within a few minutes we reached a squatter community bustling with people. (In the Philippines, the government protects squatters, and large communities spring up on other peoples’ lands.) The road was just wide enough to fit the van and lined with nipa huts and sari sari stores. We passed by two makeshift basketball courts before coming to the end of the road. We parked the van and split up to walk around and talk to the people. Unfortunately, the interviews are all in Illonggo, so I chose to follow the director down to the shore. He began talking to a group of women on the beach holding their infant children. He asked a few questions, one of which is particularly interesting. If they could have a loan to spend on anything in their community, what would it be? Their response: a storage tank for diesel fuel or an icemaker. I’ll explain why this is important, but first some background. (more…)
What’s the point of Kiva?
By Adam Kemmis Betty, KF10 Bolivia
CGAP’s annual Microfinance Funder Survey shows us that Kiva’s impact in financial terms upon the microfinance industry is – to put it politely – tiny. In fact, the combined total of institutional and individual investors, including pension funds, commercial banks and online lending platforms such as Kiva, only amounted to 7% of total funding for the microfinance industry in 2008. The big players are still development banks (such as the World Bank) and development agencies (such as USAID). As a Kiva lender, I found this rather disheartening. (more…)
Microfinance: One industry, multiple methods
By Rob Packer, KF10 Colombia
Microfinance is commonly seen as the exclusive territory of non-profits and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). While there are a lot of non-profits on the Kiva platform, there is also a fair number of for-profit MFIs and additionally, a lot of the non-Kiva money coming into microfinance is returns-driven (i.e. investment for profit). Whether it’s interest charged on a loan from a bank, the spread required for philanthropic financing by national or supranational governments, or the more apparent return sought by microfinance investment firms, there is an implicit profit motive in microfinance that touches all areas of the industry. Does a for-profit MFI with a strong social mission automatically cause lower levels of development because the ultimate aim of the company is profit? As is always the case in microfinance, the answer is “it depends”, but from my experience in Kyrgyzstan, I don’t see that microfinance and for-profit are mutually exclusive. In all the discussion of whether for-profit or non-profit organizations are better, there is an important point that is often overlooked. The main struggle for an MFI is not how much of a profit they make, but whether they break even.
Leonardo, barber and FMSD client - and coming soon to Kiva.
“Does Microcredit Really Help Poor People?” Yes, but…
KF9 Ilmari Soininen UIMCEC, Thies, Senegal
Over the last four months working in microfinance in urban Senegal, I have come across many clients who report increased income thanks to their loans. Fishmongers, clothing salesman, taxi drivers, you name it. Indeed, this has come to be expected – put the capital into the entrepreneur’s hands and he will surely put it to the most efficient use, and help bring his family out of poverty.
Makes sense. But trying to tease out exactly by how much the client’s income has increased is not as straight forward. Clients rarely keep good track of revenues and expenses, so the bottom line at the end of the month can be pretty hard to decipher. Often I wonder after the interest payments, did the client really increase his income or was it a mirage simply reflecting more money coming in and out?
My experience is consistent with the broader lack of evidence to link microfinance with increased incomes and reduced levels of poverty. In “Does Microcredit Really Help Poor People?”, an excellent recent report for CGAP, Richard Rosenberg examines recent research and looks to answer this question.
Bienvenido a Chile, Kiva!
By Suzy Price Marinkovich, KF9 Chile
If the video above doesn’t show on your browser, here it is at this link: http://vimeo.com/8899555
To see & read the bios of all the loans Fondo Esperanza has uploaded to Kiva to date, click here!
Check out all fundraising loans from Fondo Esperanza by clicking here! Also, feel free to share that link with everyone you know in a fun, cute, and easy to remember form: http://bit.ly/KivaFE
Suzy Marinkovich is currently on her last placement as a Kiva Fellow — and she is training Fondo Esperanza, a brand-new Kiva partner in Chile! Suzy has a wholehearted passion for microfinance, social justice, and poverty alleviation; what she enjoys the most is listening to the incredible stories of Kiva borrowers in South America.
An MFI run by computer programmers?
By Julia Kastner, KF10 Mexico
I knew this placement was going to be different when I walked into CrediComún’s headquarters and saw a 4 foot by 4 foot poster depicting the company’s technology infrastructure. It was as sophisticated if not more so as the infrastructure I’d seen at my last job in New York City. As I was shown around the organization, I was introduced to many computer programmers and IT specialists, even at the highest level of the organization, and I realized CrediComún wasn’t going to need my help with Excel – I was probably the one who was going to learn something about technology!
What happens when you combine microfinance methodology with sophisticated IT systems? Well, processes take less time and cost less money! While other MFIs have to wait for signed documents to travel through the mail from the branch offices in other parts of the countries, CrediComún receives its documents instantly in scanned format through their Management Information System (MIS). Because of this, CrediComún can guarantee its clients that their loans will be processed in three days! By saving money on postage and other transaction costs, CrediComún can also make more loans and help more clients!
The Last Days of the Dodo
by Avani Parekh-Bhatt, Kiva Fellow at SMEP in Nairobi, Kenya.
The "dodo" bird from SMEP
Jambo! I’d like to introduce myself, My name is Avani Parekh-Bhatt, I’m a 9th class Kiva Fellow and the last of my class to get to the field in Kenya. I hail from Durham, North Carolina. I believe in the power of human relationships, and grassroots led development, and I want to see the real nuts and bolts of microfinance, so that’s why I applied to be a Kiva Fellow (and to start my own microfinance organization one day.)
At my second day on the job at a Kiva fellow at my MFI, I looked out of my window in the marketing office, and saw in the garden the vestige of a time gone by, a bird that to me looked exactly like a dodo bird. You remember learning about the dodo –it’s now extinct, but living on in the faded black line drawings in elementary school textbooks. It struck me today that I am witnessing the death of the dodo at my MFI, and the creation of an entirely new species of organization.
Where the Rubber Meets the Road
Gemma North, KF9, Cambodia
–“I used my loan to purchase a motorcycle to transport my baskets to the market.”
–“My loan helped to buy a motorcycle for my husband to help his moto-taxi business.”
–“We used the funds to purchase tools for our mechanic business so we can fix more motorcycles…”
After nearly a month and a half of helping to post updates on CREDIT MFI’s clients, I have grown used to, and almost expect these descriptions
Everyone and everything gets transported by moto in Cambodia
on loan use. Indeed, a quick search of Kiva’s current loans in Cambodia for the Transportation sector reveals that nearly 10% of the total borrowers decided to use their funds to engage in this industry (and this does not count the many individuals who decided to buy a motorbike after they received a loan). This also seems representative of the local economy as on my daily walks through the city I am solicited by–at the very least–half a dozen moto-drivers offering me rides. Although this becomes a bit redundant after the third or fourth proposal, I make an effort to acknowledge each man with a “no thank you,” as they remind me of the numerous CREDIT clients who depend on their husband, brother or son earning an income as a taxi driver. After reading Fred Strebeigh’s The Wheels of Freedom: Bicycles in China, describing how bicycles represented political freedom, I have realized that the very same can be said for motorbikes in Cambodia. These vehicles allow entrepreneurs to engage in economic opportunities that may have been more difficult only ten years ago when most people traveled by bike or by foot.
Clever Travel Planning: Lima Style
By Karl Baumgarten KF10, Lima, Peru
I arrived in Lima at 3am Sunday, pretending to be ready to start my second fellowship with EDAPROSPO in just 4 hours. After 2 hours spent regretting my poor planning in the customs line, I hailed a cab and whizzed through Lima’s empty streets to my hospedaje. A few hours of restless sleep and a cup of instant coffee later, I hailed another cab, although in an altogether different Lima. The quiet tranquil city I had seen just 4 hours earlier had transformed itself into a city bursting at the seams with taxis, combis, buses and people somehow navigating the controlled madness.
We arrived at EDAPROSPO head office with a few phone calls and advice from the helpful Limeños who all seemed to point us in opposite directions, though always with an unfailing smile. EDAPROSPO is a large MFI who has been a Kiva partner for a few years now. EDAPROSPO is part of a larger umbrella organization, Prosperidad, working to serve Lima’s poor. EDAPROSPO is the microfinance arm of Prosperidad whcih provides credit to low-income entrepreneurs in the greater Lima area. The Lima microfinance market is a saturated one, with numerous operators all competing for clients. This competition has helped lower interest rates and has resulted in clients having a range of loan products from which to choose. Some critics of microfinance have argued that saturated microfinance markets like those in Lima are resulting in client indebtedness or debt cycles however evidence for this is scant. Rather it is more likely that like most industries where competition is fierce, prices fall and services improve. EDAPROSPO competes by offering low interest rates, fewer requirements and innovative loan products. One of these innovative loan products are education loans for those university age students whose parents are also EDAPROSPO clients. Another loan product they are piloting are loans for microfinance groups where the maximum age is 26. This loan is seeking to target those young women who are often excluded from more established microfinance groups but still have entrepreneurial drive to make them very successful clients.
During my next 3 months here, I will be helping EDAPROSPO set up a journaling process and increase their journaling percentages. I look forward to bringing you some of the inspiring stories these entrepreneurs have to tell. In the meantime, how about lending to an EDAPROPSPO entrepreneur here or join our lending team here.
What is a Mass Journal?
By Ed Coambs, KF9 Philippines, Negros Women for Tomorrow Foundation
One Great Center
I wanted to share with you one of the many finished products that a Kiva Fellow creates. In this case it is a mass journal. Each Kiva Fellow is expected at some point during their fellowship to write a personal entry to all the lenders that have made a loan through a particular field partner. Part of the mass journal should also clear up the relationship of field partners to Kiva. So I figured that many of the blog readers could also benefit from a similar letter and so here is mine. I hope that you find it helpful.
Hello Kiva lenders my name is Ed Coambs and I am a Kiva Fellow that has spent the last three months working with the field partner Negros Women for Tomorrow Foundation (NWTF). What’s that you don’t know who or what NWTF is, well that is ok. By the end of this journal my hope is that you will understand the important partnership field partners have with Kiva.
Field partners are the backbone of microfinance. They support the (more…)
Working with Ecovillages in Senegal
By Nicki Goh, KF9 Senegal
Now that I am well into my second month here in Senegal, I thought it was worth sharing a little background on the MFI where I am working.
Senegal Ecovillage Microfinance was set up in 2004 by an American volunteer, John Fay, who was carrying out an economic assessment of the village of Louly Ngogom in Senegal. Following interviews with the villagers, John decided to set up a small micro-loan pilot programme to meet the demand for financial services in otherwise un-served communities. In that first year of 2004, he lent fifteen families just $30 each to purchase peanut seed and received 100% back in repayments. Since then, and with the help of Kiva – whose timely launch in late 2005 saw SEM taken on as Kiva’s 4th ever partner – SEM has succeeded in providing financing to groups in nearly 40 villages.
SEM is the microfinance arm of GENSEN, the Global Ecovillage Network here in Senegal. The Global Ecovillage Network’s mission, as expressed on its website includes: “contributing to the worldwide transformation toward sustainability, by supporting ecovillages, joining with like-minded partners, and expanding education and demonstration programs in sustainable living.” Sustainable living as described by GEN is not only a lifestyle dedicated to the preservation of the natural environment, but also a way of life that protects the society and its traditions in an economically viable way.
As one of these “like-minded partners” SEM’s policy is to finance only those clients who are members of a GEN-SEN accredited ecovillage. As such SEM would describe itself as an MFI with a very strong social mission: not only does it operate in rural areas of the country with no other access to financial services, but it is working with a network that encourages sustainable rural development
So what is an ecovillage? And what does being a member of one entail? How does this affect the kinds of business activities that the entrepreneurs can take on with the loan from SEM (and Kiva)? Does this mean that all of the business activities of SEM’s clients are wonderfully eco-friendly, accepting of traditional values and socially beneficial in every possible way?
I have a dream…
By Ed Coambs, KF9 Philippines, Negros Women for Tomorrow Foundation
Have you ever had a dream. Sure you have. We all have.
I have created a short video in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. and the women of Negros, Philippines to remind us all that it is important to dream and dream big.
Spending the last three months in the Philippines has been an amazing experience. I have traveled to meet many Kiva entrepreneurs all over the island of Negros, and no matter what I find a way to ask about their dreams. There is no doubt this has been the most inspirational part of my time here. I hope that you will take a few minutes to remember Martin Luther King Jr. and the women of Negros. They are both great dreamers.
Questionable Answers: Reviewing Borrower Stories
By Kelly McKinnon KF9, Leon Nicaragua
I ask my mom to edit most of my writing because she is super smart (and beautiful and kind and fun and patient) but also because she is a great audience has a general understanding of what I’m doing as a Kiva Fellow.
The exchange that follows is from my mom’s review of my latest blog “The View From Here” in which I talked about two borrower stories. My responses to her questions are far from academic explanations and my terse answers leave an enormous amount unsaid. But this post is less about explanations and more about questions. I believe that sometimes the right questions are far more telling than the right answers. I believe that these questions are an important part of the stories from the field and the narrative of microfinance.
“My mom begins: I am hungry for more of the stories of the loans success… I understand the requests and the hopes… but want to hear more about the outcome.
Do they grow the business? hard to say.
Do the children learn a new trade? perhaps. But, does it serve them? questionable. does it serve the country? doubtful.
How much profit can there be in selling sweets? not much.
Do store fronts work? in some ways yes. in some ways no. Location and an established client base are significant. Lacking these, the wandering method may provide more sales opportunities.
What is “recession proof” in this poor country? I suppose the basic level of need. recession below that would just be desperation. There are not a lot of expenses to be cut out but the price of a sorbet or of ice cream is so small it would hardly effect even the tightest of budgets. perhaps this is the too small to fail category.
How do they survive? It’s just different.
Do you even want to think of their plans in terms of economics, and do you help the borrowers with such business tactics? no. but financial education is an area that I think is suuper important either to educate the borrowers themselves or to reach the children of borrowers so that they can contribute or improve the businesses.
Can we combine “industries”… get one man to make the packaging for the sweets, another to do the sweet? Economically speaking this could be the next step, to get the small businesses to create co-ops of sorts, for all of those bakers, store owners, chefs to pool their talents and resources and increase specialization, market capacity and all that stuff.
I’m trying to think of some green alternative to all those plastic bags? Actually the bags are incredibly efficient, they are thinner than a zip-lock bag, used in place of any other kind of packaging, have a billion uses and take up practically no space in the garbage.
I end: The complexity of beginning to answer to your questions feels like it is enough to break the hope that these stories begin to tell.”
In communicating with my mom I think something is said between her push for answers that explain more than “hope” and my sassy, I-can-write-this-cuz-you’re-my-mom, responses. Perhaps it is something about perspective and context and pursuing answers. About pursuing answers especially because you don’t have the right ones at hand.
I worry that my responses are discouraging as I write them to my mom, I am even more concerned that they are discouraging as I write them for a wider audience. I don’t worry that microfinance “isn’t working.” I worry that people will forget to ask what happens without it, I worry that people will give up on it. I worry that people will stop asking, because sometimes asking the right questions can help a person a great deal more than giving the right answer.
Kelly is working with Fundacion Leon 2000 in Leon, Nicaragua. You can support Kiva borrowers in Leon here.
Financial Education and Microfinance
By Sheethal Shobowale, KF9, Peru
Doris, one of the loan officers at Asociación Arariwa, has been working with clients in Urubamba and Cusco for 17 years.
I sat in on one of the monthly loan payment meetings of one of her communal banks, Aguas Buenas. All members paid their monthly payments on time, but two of the members asked permission beforehand not to attend. Because of their absence, Doris commented on the importance of attending the monthly meetings, saying “No vamos a lograr nada” (We won’t achieve anything this way). She even called one of the absent members on her cellphone to remind them of the importance of attending monthly meetings.
Attendance is importance especially since during each meeting, loan officers teach a short workshop on different topics such as financial literacy, business training, family well-being or health. In this meeting Doris taught a lesson on setting financial goals. Having done some financial literacy workshops for teenagers and some credit counseling for adults in my work with the Lower East Side Credit Union in New York, I was excited and honored to see Arariwa’s financial literacy training in action, especially by a loan officer as experienced as Doris.
Consider Microfinance Ancillary Effects
By Alex Duong, KF9, Vietnam
Before continuing, please take time to read colleague Victoria Kabak’s post on Nicaragua. I’d like her courageous efforts to be recognized. And if you are out to make a loan today, rather than Vietnam, please consider funding someone in Nicaragua here, particularly a borrower with AFODENIC.
Victoria, I don’t have an answer either. Perhaps build a regression model? But that is probably skewed by my swimming in a quantitative pool these last few days with friends cash flow and NPV.
***
Ok, on to this post about ancillary effects. A recent trend in microfinance (MF) has been to incorporate social performance indicators. The concept involves measuring poverty alleviation actually induced through loans and other MF efforts. Metrics or not, what I can tell you is that Madame Lien would put those statistics to shame. Check out her preschool students below.
“Il faut profiter, ein?”
This is as close as I can get to looking Togolese!
By Taylor Akin, KF9, Togo
It’s amazing how identity can be so malleable. In a matter of hours, a person can be transformed from local to foreigner, fluent to fumbling, familiar to fascinating, and even from black to white. Anyone who has ever travelled even just a couple hours outside their hometown has experienced this shift. The change in identity may happen to varying degrees, but its unpredictability remains a constant.
In the past, I have often travelled to locations where my skin colour has conveniently allowed me to blend in. The mix of my Jamaican and British heritage has provided me with a variety of clever masks. I may appear to be Ecuadorian, Spanish, and even Moroccan depending on my location. Since my arrival in Lomé, however, I have done anything but blend in. (more…)
How to write a borrower profile
By Jeremy Lapedis, KF9, Guatemala
This morning, I went to do some borrower profiles. The things that you see on Kiva’s website when you want to make a loan, those are borrower profiles. The picture, the description of the person and his or her business are really the meat of the profile (especially if they are selling animal products). Well, from people far away from the scenes, it might be simple enough what you want to see: a smiling person, with his or her business in the background, a description of family life, of business history, of what use the loan will be, and of hopes and dreams. All this in three paragraphs. What would your profile look like? I made one for myself, and it’s at the bottom of this post.
So as you maybe are starting to see, writing the profiles are not as simple as they may seem on the website. (more…)
A view of lending from the field
By Ed Coambs, KF9 Philippines, Negros Women for Tomorrow Foundation
A great entrepreneur!
By now you have probably had a chance to make a loan on Kiva.org and if not you are thinking about it. Either way you are probably thinking about how does the loan get made in the field. Well like you I wondered this until I became a Kiva Fellow. Now that I have spent 3 months in the field, I can honestly say I know how the lending process works.
Let me just say it is a lot hotter, and (more…)
The Case for Nicaragua
By Victoria Kabak, KF9, Nicaragua
As I finish up my placement as a Kiva Fellow in Nicaragua, there is one question that I didn’t know the answer to when I arrived and that still confounds me three months later. Why isn’t Nicaragua a more “popular” country to lend to on Kiva?
The average time to fund a loan on Kiva to a borrower from AFODENIC, the microfinance institution where I’ve been a Kiva Fellow here in Nicaragua, is 5.65 days, almost 2.5 times the overall average (this information can be found on any partner page, under the “Loan Characteristics on Kiva” heading). Of the first 14 loans to expire without being fully funded in the history of Kiva, six of them were to Nicaraguan borrowers.
Nicaragua is the #1 poorest country in Latin America, with the second lowest per capita income in the entire Western Hemisphere, after Haiti (and a 2009 article in Latin Business Chronicle declared Nicaragua worse-off than Haiti based on figures released by the IMF). Despite its proximity to the happiest country in the world and the similarities the two countries share in terms of tropical climate and natural beauty, a history of political strife and fairly recent revolution – only 30 years ago – has kept Nicaragua (very far away) from enjoying the relative prosperity of its neighbor Costa Rica. As of 2005, the poverty rate in Nicaragua was 48 percent.
On a daily basis in Managua I pass by houses constructed of a combination of metal sheets and cardboard, and I have visited borrowers in houses like this too—homes where curtains are hung to separate rooms because they can’t afford walls. Right outside of the capital many of the roads that Kiva borrowers live on are pure dirt, no gravel (not even what I’d usually refer to at home as a “dirt road”), comprised of rut after rut and strewn with garbage, making them virtually impassable in anything but a pick-up truck. I have met borrowers who work all day making tortillas, which they sell for 1 córdoba each, less than five cents, and borrowers who had to start selling Avon products because their other two jobs weren’t bringing in enough money. I’ve met 13-year-old girls who spend their summer vacation (November-February) trying to sell bracelets for less than $1.50 each at beaches where there isn’t anyone to sell bracelets to. (more…)
Filipino Values Pt 1: Bahala Na
When I was in grade school, we would start every year of Pilipino class with a lesson on what the Filipino traits were. The ones I particularly remember are: bahala na, pakikisama, hiya, mañana habit, and utang na loob. These five values inform every Kiva Fellow’s experience in the Philippines but also explain why many of the micro-entrepreneurs I’ve spoken to become borrowers in the first place. Literally translated, these words sometimes seem pejorative in English yet without understanding them, one would be hard-pressed to understand how microfinance works in the Philippines. (more…)
