Looking Past the Picture
15 February 2010 at 05:43 Peter 20 comments
By Peter Marchant, KF10 Azerbaijan
The photos on borrower profiles provide a key connection between Kiva lenders and the borrowers they fund, but lending based on snapshots has drawbacks. A photo can convey a lot about a borrower, a culture, a business or a life and create an emotional reaction for the viewer. Yet the very power of a picture can prevent lenders from learning the full story of a borrower and their country.
Azerbaijan’s borrower photos often feature dour men in tweed coats peering out unsmiling from behind bushy mustaches. They stand near a few head of cattle in fields that look like they might be 10 minutes outside of Boston just as easily as 10 minutes north of the Iranian border. These pictures tend not to tug at the heart like the African woman with three young children pulling at her hem and these loans often take days or weeks to fund and a small minority expire unfunded after 30 days on the Kiva website. Nevertheless, these borrowers have stories every bit as compelling and needs every bit as deep.
Still, many of us find ourselves lending without looking much beyond the photos. Lending to any Kiva borrower is fantastic. However, it’s worth remembering that everyone posted on Kiva has been deemed to need a loan by one of Kiva’s partners. If you, like me, sometimes find yourself lending based on what you feel poverty should look like, I encourage you to take the opportunity to learn about a new culture. Click on the goat farmer in Kyrgyzstan. Find Azerbaijan on a map and check out the Supporters of Azerbaijan Lending Group. Look up the GDP per capita of Tajikistan (it’s less than Sudan). Kiva offers a wonderful opportunity, not just to support development, connect with borrowers and diminish the effects of poverty, but to educate and enrich ourselves as well. We would be remiss not to take advantage of it because we can’t look beyond a picture.
Peter Marchant is a Kiva Fellow serving his first placement with AqroInvest Credit Union in Azerbaijan. Click on Azerbaijan Borrowers for a list of Azeri borrowers currently on Kiva or click Supporters of Azerbaijan to join the Azerbaijan lending group. Visit Kiva.org to see how the whole thing works.
Entry filed under: All. Tags: Azerbaijan, Azerbaijani microfinance, Azeri, Kiva, kiva microloans, kiva.org, microfinance, www.kiva.org.
1. Judy | 8 August 2010 at 16:48
What faces reveal….a hard life, long days of physical toil with uncertain rewards….still the farmer plants and the livestock men tend their sheep and cattle, their faces windburned from days in the fields.
Taking pictures will likely involve hours on unpaved roads to reach a farm. I applaud the lending officers who visit the farmers to take their applications as well as the field partner who rations his time by taking pictures in the office.
Motivations to lend may rest on frivolous foundations, but over the long haul, Kivan lenders are drawn into the world of the borrower and will seek understanding beyond the Kiva blurbs. That’s the impetus behind my messages on Supporters of Azerbaijan, as well as the creation of Kiva on Wheels, the team supporting transportation and related service/retail loans….gotta get those goods to market somehow….and support the community equipment operators that enable farming on a more productive scale.
Thanks, Peter, for your great blogs!
2. D-Day in Liberia « Kiva Stories from the Field | 22 March 2010 at 09:12
[...] Lenders open their hearts and wallets faster to smiling borrowers, and colorful, evocative photos are a further catalyst. This bias is predictable, but unfortunate — what if borrowers don’t have anything to smile about, or if their culture dictates serious faces when photos are taken, or if they don’t fit with the idea of what poverty should “look like”? [...]
3. markaz18 | 17 February 2010 at 11:44
Well, that makes sense. But it’s unfair. Unfair to those who do not attempt to gain our sympathy because they have dignity
4. markaz18 | 17 February 2010 at 11:05
I believe man’s search for poverty-related images he can be sympathetic with is a result of his exposure to poverty porn. Why does he have to be subjected to extreme feelings and images before he can act?
5. Jeff | 17 February 2010 at 11:36
Because it’s a natural filtering process. There are more needs for action than a person can accommodate, therefore he or she has to choose which ones to act upon. The ones that generate the strongest feelings are chosen.
…..Jeff
6. Sarah | 17 February 2010 at 09:01
This post brings up such a good piont – I am totally guilty of this. I have given 28 loans only one of which went to this region (a woman in Tajikistan who had a great picture of her selling apricots!)
I do also agree with the comments above that some of the loans can get buried and thus expire. Maybe Kiva could put some sort of extra logo to draw attention to the loans about to expire – I imagine people would feel compelled to give to these borrowers if they knew they were at risk of not getting any loan and it would counteract the biases some lenders may have towards those borrowers with more “appealing” photos.
I’m going to keep this in mind and I know what region to search when I give my next loan.
7. david oglaza | 16 February 2010 at 01:30
What about posting videos instead? They should also be rotated onto the home page and further research by KIVA about the speed at which these loans are funded. Those that are funded slower should be added to the homepage more often or maybe a selection shown to lenders when they log on for example?
8. Peter | 16 February 2010 at 03:37
All great ideas. Videos are now being posted to some borrower profiles and as you suggest they do decrease the time it takes those loans to fund. Unfortunately, many MFIs don’t have the equipment or skill set to work with Video so for right now much of the video work is left up to the Kiva Fellows.
9. marydear | 16 February 2010 at 01:23
thanks for your post peter. Kiva Love
10. Amanda in CA | 15 February 2010 at 21:08
I have to disagree a bit with some of what was said. It’s just my opinion but I think the borrower would be upset if they were asked to dress up their photo a bit. To them, what do they care how they look as they just want the money from the MFI.
To me, the pictures represent who they really are. It’s a hard life in a rugged country. With a limited budget and only a few workers to cover an area, i don’t think it’s realistic to take the time out to craft a professional photo. I have to admit that I’m guilty of this too as I find myself drawn more to the rancher who’s standing with his livestock, rather than the rancher sitting in the MFI office or standing on the street. But I have to accept that sometimes it’s not feasible to travel out to the borrowers home and I certainly don’t want them to “create” an image to grab my attention. One time last year I noticed that an MFI had had all their borrowers pose with the same animal (which u could tell by the distinct markings) and I felt like all the pictures were a lie. But is this what the mfi felt they had to do to be funded? It’s a fine line they walk as sometimes I feel Kiva is part beauty pageant, yet they are reduced to competing for our attention (and ultimately our money).
11. Antoine Stépane Terjanian | 16 February 2010 at 14:16
Amanda:
You hit it right on the head. Whatever we do, however a hard sell we have for the country we have been assigned, we have to remain honest. I am sure I am preaching to the converted. If we lie once, then we will lose the trust of the lenders and of our colleagues. Personal pride and emulation is always good to have among KFA fellows, but never at the expense of honesty. We all have heard that there are lies, damn lies, and then statistics, but in this case, we even went further!
AST
12. David | 15 February 2010 at 20:38
Well many men with cows have had loans successfully raised on Kiva. The problem isn’t the lender’s perceptions of these men or their cows. When the loan gets some visibility on the site it will be raised in time.
The reason these loans expire is that by the design of the site Kiva buries the older loans under the weight of maybe 1000 or so other newer loans and the older loans simply do not get the visibility required. If Kiva had a mechanism to give each loan a fair chance at being seen there would not be any expiring loans at all.
Lenders should be shown a random selection of loans or some rotation to ensure that each loan is seen equally. Each of the clients is equally deserving and the incredibly generous Kiva lenders are eager to offer them all the opportunity of a loan.
To suggest that these loans languish because lender’s think the clients are undeserving is highly offensive and does a grave injustice to all Kiva lenders.
13. Amanda in CA | 15 February 2010 at 21:17
David I totally agree with you about how it’s unfair that these loans get burried by the deluge of new loans. I too have noticed that when sorted by popularity, new loans appear first even if no one has lent to them yet. If no ones lent to them, how are they popular? It would be nice if Kiva could come up with a better presentation of random loans rather than just the four you find at the bottom of a borrower page. How many people actually scroll down to the bottom?
14. Anna | 15 February 2010 at 15:29
This is a very interesting post and I think it serves to remind us all about our preconceptions and sterotyping generally. The image is a powerful and easy to exploit thing and there are cultural connotations inherent in imagery as previous comments have mentioned.
However I agree that it isn’t the image alone that makes it more difficult to fund these loans as I think there is an inherent sterotyped racist basis as to who is needy – and many (although not all) people find it easier to related to the needy ‘other’ – someone who is clearly different from us and this is something that Aid agencies have expolited and cultivated for years. Case in point the shameful use of images of starving African child with flies buzzing around them that are used by many charity groups to raise money. This negative imagery is shameful and serves to reinforce negative sterotypes and unacknowleged racism about who is ‘needy’ and deserves our funds.
15. Annette | 15 February 2010 at 10:09
You made some good points – that lenders should not always lend on the basis of a sympathetic picture. On the other hand I often find the men with the bushy moustaches quite appealing! Smiling isn’t really necessary – most Chinese look as if they are going to be shot when they have their pictures taken.
My strategy is to look at the loans expiring soon and contribute to at least one, then choose another that tugs my heartstrings. Or one due to expire. Or one from a part of the world I haven’t already lent to. Or… our reasons for choosing whom to lend to can be very complicated.
16. JD | 15 February 2010 at 09:48
Great post, Peter. Having lived for two years in southern Bulgaria, I can attest to the high level of need in the region of Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
While GDP stats put Azerbaijan far above such Kiva countries as Benin, Mali and Cambodia, it is effectively equivalent to the Dominican Republic.
http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=ny_gdp_mktp_cd&idim=country:KEN&dl=en&hl=en&q=gdp+kenya#met=ny_gdp_mktp_cd&idim=country:KEN:AZE:ARM:BIH:BGR:DOM:GTM:KGZ:MNG:SDN:TJK
I think the numbers can sometimes hide the realities on the ground. People are living outside of the realm of financial access.
Keep up the great work bringing attention to this less well-known part of the world.
JD
17. Antoine Stépane Terjanian | 15 February 2010 at 08:46
Mr. Marchant:
I am a bit confused by what I just read on your post attempting to encourage us to lend to “AZERBAIJAN” borrowers. You wrote: “Click on the goat farmer in Kyrgyzstan. Find Azerbaijan on a map and check out the Supporters of Azerbaijan Lending Group. Look up the GDP per capita of Tajikistan (it’s less than Sudan)”.
If you want us to help “AZERBAIJAN” borrowers why would you want us to look at the Tajikistan GDP per capita? Is this a typo? if so, please correct my impression and give us the GDP per capita of oil producer Azerbaijan compared with that of Sudan.
Best wishes on your assignment
AT
18. Kelly | 15 February 2010 at 10:24
I see how you might be confused. However, Mr. Marchant was not attempting to encourage us only to lend to Azerbaijan borrowers, but rather to consider lending to borrowers whose photos don’t necessarily “tug at the heart.” He used three examples of places whose borrowers are in desperate need, but whose loans tend to go unfunded, namely Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, and Kyrgyzstan. He pointed out that the GDP in Kyrgyzstan is less than Sudan to to illustrate that these are both very poor countries, but that Kyrgyzstan’s(like Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, and others) needs are not being fulfilled like Sudan’s. I think Mr. Marchant is asking us to examine our motivations for choosing who to lend to, and asking us not to “lend on looks.” I have been guilty of this, and I’m going to take up his challenge right now. I usually lend in Latin America, but I am going to spend a little more time reading about borrowers in a culture with which I am not so familiar.
19. monicahamlett | 15 February 2010 at 07:41
Great blog Peter. It’s a tough cultural barrier…
A photographer I met this weekend told me he was in Eastern Europe and could not get a smile from his subjects. When he asked why people do not like to smile someone said, “mouth of wolf, eyes of pig” – smiling was simply and harshly unattractive to them.
20. Jeff | 15 February 2010 at 06:35
You make a good point, Peter. But there are two sides to the coin. What is the Azerbaijan field partner doing to improve their photos so that they do not show “dour men in tweed coats peering out unsmiling from behind bushy mustaches”? Maybe other family members could be in the photos, maybe their tweed coats could be removed for the photo, maybe they could try to not look so dour (although maybe they have reasons why they do look dour).
The point is the field partner has a problem with the photos and it’s probably going to be more productive to try to change the photos rather than to try to change the lenders.
…..Jeff