Archive for February, 2010
Not Your Average Courtroom Drama
The atmosphere was tense. All eyes were on the defendant, a small woman in her mid-thirties. She rose from her seat and softly explained her final argument– I know now that I’m guilty. I should have paid on time, but my children were sick. I had to take them to the hospital and could not be home when it was time to make the payments. I’m sorry I didn’t explain this to you sooner, but I didn’t realize how much this matters to the group. She slunk back into her chair, and the jury began to deliberate.
Training the trainers
When I got back to my MFI, CrediComun, here in Mexico City after a one-week trip home to Boston last week, I asked if they needed any help training their loan officers. “Absolutely not!” responded my MFI contact “we’ve got it under control!”
Continue Reading 16 February 2010 at 08:45 Julia Kastner 3 comments
First Week Reflections
Hello! My name is Polai and I am the new Kiva Fellow at field partner AMK. I arrived in Phnom Penh, Cambodia a little over a week ago. As I start my second week here, I wanted to reflect on my experience so far being Kiva’s first Khmer speaking fellow and a Cambodian-American living here.
Liberians United for Haiti
The Liberians United for Haiti Relief Concert took place last weekend at one of Monrovia’s large outdoor stadiums. “Please give to Haiti! We know what it is like to have nothing, so let us give to a country that has just been devastated,” cried the Master of Ceremonies. The boisterous crowd raised their hands and cheered in approval.
Continue Reading 16 February 2010 at 00:50 Karen Buxton 13 comments
Begging – A Sign of Development?
Whether at home or abroad no one likes to see people begging for money. In the countries where most Kiva Fellows come from it’s a sad sign of social dysfunction and a failure to provide adequate opportunities for everyone. But in the developing world could it actually be a sign of progress? After all, if a country can support begging, then it must be generating income beyond mere subsistence.
Continue Reading 15 February 2010 at 09:43 Nick Malouin 8 comments
Looking Past the Picture
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.
Continue Reading 15 February 2010 at 05:43 Peter 20 comments
How To Make Shoes and Rice With One Flame
A Kiva entrepreneur’s business intertwined with his home and family.
Continue Reading 14 February 2010 at 12:30 Monica Ann Bernadette 9 comments
Challenging Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon
For all those who have succumbed to playing the late night trivia game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”, you know it is based on the assumption that any actor can be linked through his or her film roles to actor Kevin Bacon within six steps. The game is a play on the network idea “Six Degrees of Separation” that everyone is at most six steps away from any other person on Earth.
What I have come to realize week one into my placement as a brand new Kiva Fellow is Kevin Bacon is to Hollywood as Kiva Fellows are to the world of microfinance.
Continue Reading 13 February 2010 at 21:17 Christina Reyes 4 comments
Kiva & the Ukrainian election: what’s the connection?
As a Kiva Fellow, I don’t think I’ll have a clear picture of how Kiva borrowers have been affected by Ukraine’s election or the country’s economic instability until I meet the entrepreneurs in person, which starts next week. I’ll be meeting Kiva borrowers at the enormous Angolenko Market, the largest market in Zaporozhye that houses many of HOPE Ukraine’s clients.
Continue Reading 13 February 2010 at 07:15 leahespicea 5 comments
Week 1: Q&A
Where am I?
What am I doing?
Who am I?
These are all important questions that Kiva Fellows ask themselves. I imagine that I will spend the duration of my Kiva Fellowship (and probably a long time after) seeking the answers to these questions. So, what of the questions I have asked of my surroundings this week?
Continue Reading 12 February 2010 at 12:44 Kati Mayfield 4 comments
Kiva’s newest cash cow: Juhudi Kilimo
Hezron Murinde is a happy man. After 20 years of subsistence farming in a hilly region of Kenya’s Central Province, he’s earning a profit. It started with a chaff cutter. A chaff cutter is a big, cranky device that chops feed into small enough pieces for livestock to eat (and livestock eat a lot). The chaff cutter led to the cow. Not just any cow, but a high-yield dairy cow that produces enough milk to out-gross all the maize and beans Hezron grows across acres of land.
Hezron and his watermelon-eating cow
Agricultural Microfinance: Serving the Poorest
Last week I went to a town called La Castellana about an hour south of Bacolod to visit the NWTF branch there. I was there to meet a handful of Kiva borrowers and interview them about the progress of their loan. Over the course of two days, I met 6 women that currently have a loan with Kiva, and another 4 that I am going to post to the site this week. La Castellana is a town in the mountains that is largely supported by agriculture. It is also one of the major areas impacted by agrarian reform.
The Philippines is a country of ~90 million people, half of whom live in rural areas. Eighty percent (80%) of Filipinos living below the poverty line are in rural communities, supported primarily by agriculture. Over the past three decades, agricultural land ownership in the Philippines underwent a transformation via a series of legislation known as Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) passed in 1988. Designed to provide landless farm workers a piece of land, the program has redistributed several million hectares of farmland in 1.1-hectare units. It is a controversial topic, and its effectiveness at combating poverty is debatable. Regardless of whether or not CARP has worked, the ARBs (Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries) – the recipients of the farmland – are the poorest of the poor. They struggle to plant sugarcane and a piece of land that is too small to profitably grow sugarcane. They try to buy fertilizer and farming equipment but don’t have the capital. The government gave them land but failed to provide adequate funding or training. In many ways, the cards are stacked against them. So, unable to make ends meet, many just rent their land back to the owner. It is a vicious cycle, but microfinance can offer a solution.
Continue Reading 12 February 2010 at 09:00 Josh Weinstein 11 comments
Let’s Sri How This Kiva Thing Works
I apologize for the awfully-punned title but I really couldn’t resist. Coming down from a humidity-induced fog, I can’t be expected to think clearly or use proper blog-titling judgment at this point. I’m writing this post from beautiful Colombo, Sri Lanka, as I look out the door to a coconut tree from the head offices of brand new Kiva partner, BRAC Sri Lanka. Not only is BRAC Sri Lanka a brand new field partner to Kiva, but so is this island nation of Sri Lanka.
Continue Reading 12 February 2010 at 01:09 bkbriankelly 7 comments
5′-6″ (1.65m) Tall or Short?
As a kid growing up, and now at 5’-6” tall I’ve always been on the short side, among friends, classmates, teammates, you name it! As I walk around town and meet people in my new town, I noticed I’m actually a tall person around here. Never thought being a Kiva Fellow would make me tall… anyways, what is interesting is that it depends on your reference point.
Continue Reading 11 February 2010 at 15:59 Carlos 22 comments
Two eyes, two arms. Just like you.
My landlord recently explained to me that when she moved to the United States in 1980 after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, she got a job assembling hi-tech equipment like computer motherboards. She was intimidated by the difficult work at first. The workers had to be surgically precise and use extremely small materials, but she looked at her colleagues and said to herself “They have two eyes and two arms, just like me. Anything they can do, I can do.” She took the challenge head-on and was a productive, successful employee for many years before returning to Cambodia in the early 1990’s.
It’s a Whole New World…
So imagine your first week as a Kiva Fellow placed at a microfinance institution in Nairobi, Kenya. Think about what the place may look like, how the people will greet you, and the overall atmosphere of the office. Now scrap all that, because my first few days at Juhudi Kilimo have been so far above and beyond anything I could have imagined.
Toilet, WC, Latrine?
What type of toilet facility does the household have?
A. Pit latrine, septic tank, other without septic tank, public toilet, shared toilet, or other
B. Connected to sewerage
C. Open land
D. None
I had spent the last two weeks pouring over material on the Cambodia Progress Out of Poverty Index (PPI) scorecard from which the above question is excerpted. However, I was still unsure of how–were I a client of CREDIT MFI taking the PPI survey–I would distinguish between the last two answer options. What is the difference between “Open land” and “None”? Maybe, I pondered, “None” has a different cultural meaning that I am not able to understand as a foreigner?
Continue Reading 10 February 2010 at 02:00 voyageons 1 comment
Microfinance Will Not End Poverty, Microfinance Institutions Will
Inspired by Nicholas Kristof’s latest blog post: The Role of Microfinance
Microfinance is “the most visible innovation in anti-poverty policy in the last half century.” Because of this, many have put such high expectations on the effects of microfinance and the pace at which it can have an impact on ending poverty. Some have even called it the panacea for poverty.
Continue Reading 9 February 2010 at 17:19 Sanjaya P 22 comments
A Community in Search of Progress
Throughout my Fellowship in Peru and now in Ecuador, I have been bestowed the opportunity to launch Kiva partnerships with 2 microfinance organizations and teach loan officers in various communities how to administer loans and interview borrowers. However, after visiting the town of Chillanes, Ecuador with new Kiva Field Partner Cooperativa San José, this time I didn’t leave with the exciting feeling that I am helping bring the Kiva support and hopefully positive change to more people in underdeveloped communities.
Continue Reading 9 February 2010 at 14:11 joshpwilcox 2 comments
Giving hope and commitment
One of my lasts tasks as a Kiva Fellow was to do a journal update an incarcerated Kiva entrepreneur.
Kiva’s field partner in Guatemala City, FAPE, has a program where they give women in jail trainings and a loan for their businesses while incarcerated. About one year ago, FAPE initiated this program in the jail in Guatemala City, four of the women were Kiva clients. Training programs were given. Loans were being repaid, and the women were even putting money away in savings. The program was a success. In late Summer of 2009, two things happened: the women were moved from the jail to the correctional facility and FAPE changed directors.
Continue Reading 9 February 2010 at 06:00 Jeremy Lapedis 5 comments
Do you need more fun in your life?
I am not sure if it is an East Coast thing or a Catholic school thing but when I was in grammar school I loved field day. In kid language Field Day = “No more classes, no more books, no more teacher’s dirty looks.”A day full of watermelon to eat and games to play – a clear demarkation that summer and weeks of PLAYTIME were on the way – This was only the beginning!
Day 0: A Kiva Fellow’s reflections
As I sit at a local internet cafe in Cabanatuan city, Philippines (where I am surrounded by five kids all reading out loud the blogs of other Kiva Fellows’ from my computer screen!), I find myself reflecting more on what I hope to learn when I’m in the field.
Continue Reading 8 February 2010 at 00:03 vishnu84 5 comments
Offense Defense
With Super Bowl Sunday upon us, I have begun to think of life as a football game. Closer analysis of the sport inevitably leads to two topics of deliberation: offense and defense. Sunday night, the Colts and the Saints will be rotating their players based on their specialized roles in the field. We will see the offense attack, take control and engage the opposing team with the objective of scoring points. Then there is the defense, guarding their possession and protecting it from attack. As I thought about these two “ways of life”, I realized, I myself had rotated between offense and defense modes since living in South America.
Cusco on My Mind
If you haven’t heard, there have been terrible floods in Cusco, Peru in the past week. Since we are in the thick of La Epoca de la Lluvia (the rainy season), rain is expected but the level of destruction seen in the area is unimaginable.
Tourism is the main industry in Cusco, and the damage produced by the rain does substantial damage on the Cusco economy. From the February 3rd warden message from the U.S. Embassy in Peru, I read that Machu Picchu is closed and the rail line between Ollantaytambo and Aguas Calientes is closed due to landslides until possibly March. I also read that tourists were stranded in Aguas Calientes (the town closest to Incan archeological site Machu Picchu) and that the conditions were excruciating. Luckily, helicopters eventually evacuated all the tourists from the town.
Unfortunately, my Kiva clients in Cusco don’t have that luxury.
Don’t Cry for Me…Ecuador!
As my first entry in the Kiva Fellows Blog, I thought I would answer the obvious question, “Why did you apply to be a Kiva Fellow”? Leaving a (paying) job to work for free for 3 months doesn’t always sound appealing, yet I could not be more thrilled to start work in Ecuador as a Kiva Fellow at Fundación D-MIRO this Monday.
While filling out my application to become a Kiva Fellow, I was asked to write a short essay answering this very question and I would like to share with you my response:
New Undertaking for Kiva, New Beginning for this Fellow
Social Performance Monitoring
This morning, I fly to Phnom Penh, Cambodia to begin three months as a Kiva Fellow at CREDIT, one of Kiva’s longest standing field partners. Along with Bryan Goldfinger in Nicaragua and Nishita Roy in Lebanon, I will be one of three Kiva Fellows pilot testing Social Performance Monitoring at several field partners (in addition to conducting the more traditional duties of a Kiva Fellow). Measuring a microfinance institution’s “social” performance, in addition to financial performance, is an increasingly important facet of microfinance assessment and will be a focal point on Kiva’s agenda this year. Social performance is essentially a microfinance (more…)
Little Boxes Made of Ticky-Tacky
In 1962, the folk artist Malvina Reynolds wrote a song to describe the suburban development she saw in the communities south of San Francisco. While the hills of San Francisco are about as far away from the hills of Bali, Indonesia, as can be—both literally and metaphorically—these lyrics popped in to my head while driving my motorbike to visit Kiva borrowers last week.
A Fellow’s Five Favorite Posts (on Peru!)
The Fellows’ Blog is fast approaching its 1000th entry. With fresh updates posted multiple times daily, even the most dedicated readers can’t help but miss some real gems. With that in mind, I’d like to shine a light on some of the great work done by recent fellows in Peru. (more…)
