Archive for July, 2011
To the Ends of the Earth
By Eric Rindal – Sierra Leone – KF15
I am writing this blog by hand today as I sit at my desk in Makeni, Sierra Leone. There is no power for the whole office. When I ask, “isn’t there National Power from the grid?” people just laugh (it only comes on at night for a few hours). When I ask, “What about the generator?” people just shrug (it runs on petrol). The town is actually out of petrol on this cloud-tumbling Monday morning.
With finicky fuel costs, scarcity of fuel, and an inflation rate of 17.7% there are many reasons for days like this. The MFI (Microfinance Institution) staff is fidgeting to power up their computers and begin working on the ebb and flow of loans, clients, and monthly reports. Such is life in rural Sierra Leone, where verdant tropical forests blanket the region and scattered mountains are sleeping like behemoth tortoises.
Green Microfinance: Backyard Biogas in Bali, Indonesia
By Anne Conlin, KF15 Indonesia
In a past blog post, I discussed how loans from Kiva’s partner MUK in rural West Bali, Indonesia are helping women expand the scale of their pig breeding businesses. As part of MUK’s mission statement is to address local environmental issues, MUK is currently piloting a program that would put pig waste to good use, by installing biogas digesters in the backyards of successful pig borrowers.
Continue Reading 28 July 2011 at 02:55 anneconlin 7 comments
Working Animals, Conservation & Microfinance
In this post Kiva Fellow Tim Young considers two successful examples of organisations working with local communities to improve the livelihoods of working animals and their wild cousins, and considers how microfinance could be used to help finance, support and further these efforts.
Continue Reading 27 July 2011 at 09:36 letimyoung 8 comments
Updates from the Field: Poverty Assessments, Bush Taxis + Meeting “My” Borrower
Last week the Fellows Blog gave us glimpses into life on the ground for Kiva fellows, Kiva borrowers, and that unique moment when those lives are brought together by a Kiva loan! Whether riding in Daniel’s bush taxi on the way to work in South Africa, exploring Bafut and crossing the threshold into borrowers’ homes with Faith in Cameroon, or sharing a meal with Megan and ‘her’ borrower Graciela in the market in Ecuador, these posts illustrate the world of actors brought together by Kiva.
Continue Reading 25 July 2011 at 08:00 Kate Bennett 5 comments
Meeting “My” Borrower
By Megan Bond, KF15, Ecuador
Kiva provides a new lens through which we can view global problems and solutions. Just contemplating a concept like “world poverty” seems like an insurmountable task. It is overwhelming. It is daunting. Kiva helps us focus our concerns for the problems presented by poverty on a global level by allowing us to connect with entrepreneurs in need of a hand up around the world on a more personal level. A loan through Kiva is an investment in an individual or group, a business, and a community. We could take it as far as saying that a loan through Kiva is also an investment in a country, a continent, and a global effort to alleviate poverty.
Kiva lenders make these loans over and over again, choosing the characteristics of the borrower they want to invest in. Perhaps it’s their name (Personally, I like to search for women named Carmelita), their country (I know there are some “Country Collectors” out there!), or the fact that they sell fried food but something (tangible or intangible) connects each lender with each borrower. Kiva Fellows have written about it beautifully in the past. It’s an incredible thing to feel that connection and to invest in someone you will never likely meet in person. But, what if you could meet the person on the other side of the profile? What would you do? What would you ask? I had to think about this as I got the opportunity to meet a borrower I had lent to before I came to Ecuador as a Kiva Fellow.
Continue Reading 21 July 2011 at 12:00 Megan Bond 5 comments
Video Journal: The Most Exciting Thing to Do in Richards Bay, South Africa
By Daniel Jung, KF15, South Africa
Oh, the excitement I felt once I confirmed my Kiva Fellowship for South Africa, one of the world’s great travel destinations. Where would I be based? In Cape Town, under the shadow of Table Mountain? In Johannesburg, South Africa’s hub of business and culture? South African wine country? Not exactly. I am most definitely, positively not near one of South Africa’s main travel destinations. Instead, I am in Richards Bay. Here’s a description of Richards Bay in The Lonely Planet’s Guide to South Africa:
“The industrial port of Richards Bay is a mass of modern suburbia, aluminium smelters and a web of roads linking very little. It’s included here for two reasons: many people fly in and out of Richards Bay Airport, as do many bird species(.)”
Bafut by Foot
At GHAPE, new borrower centers are established only in areas identified as mostly poor. Individual borrowers are also screened using a tool called the Basic Needs Test to determine whether they qualify as potential GHAPE borrowers – very poor based on a variety of measurable factors. Recently I had the opportunity to accompany GHAPE’s Chief of Administration and Finance and the Assistant Field Manager to conduct a Basic Needs Test for a new borrower center in Bafut, outside Bamenda. The Basic Needs Test is a survey developed by GHAPE staff to first assess the overall poverty level of an area and then to screen potential borrowers to learn their economic status. GHAPE administers micro-loans, beginning as small as $10, to the poorest of the poor. In order to assess whether new clients qualify as very poor, GHAPE visits their home and asks detailed questions. The questions focus on 5 main areas: food consumption (number and quality of meals per day), clothes, cleanliness, house structure, and health. type of toilet, number of school age children in school, and whether or not children under age 6 receive milk every day.
Continue Reading 19 July 2011 at 23:00 faithgarlington 9 comments
The Externalities of it All
by Eric Rindal – KF15 – Sierra Leone
“What has changed in your business since you took out your loan?” I ask Kiva borrower Fatmata as we stand amongst the whirling crowd in a Freetown market. “Oh, very much, everything has changed,” she says as her eyes quickly sway toward the crowd, then back to mine. I ask her to be more specific; she picks up some of her merchandise and slaps it down with a smile, “I can pay for my child’s school fees.
I have one, a girl, who is in her last year of schooling.” Her pending graduation is quite an accomplishment in a country where 24% of women are literate and nearly half the population lacks a formal education. When Fatmata mentions her daughter’s final year, it is obvious this is a triumph for her as well.
Update from the Field: Externalities, New Faces + Loans that Change Lives
Microfinance is about change- positive change for borrowers, their local economies, and the future of the developing world. This week our Fellows share stories of change across the globe: a brighter outcome for the children of Kiva borrowers in Sierra Leone; transformed businesses and microenterprises in Chile; and a lifestyle of adapting to change, for better or worse, in Lebanon, where resolute entrepreneurs still pay their loans on time.
It’s true what they say- these really are Loans that Change Lives.
Continue Reading 18 July 2011 at 03:08 Kate Bennett 5 comments
Faces from the field: A day of visits and photos from Chile
Early this week I had to the opportunity to go out into the field with Kiva staff member Nicolas Lafaye (Portfolio Manager for South America) as he visited Fondo Esperanza in Santiago, Chile. This day gave me the opportunity to focus on two of my favorite parts of being a Kiva Fellow: talking with clients and taking photos. With camera in hand we headed out to two communities in the Santiago area, visited clients in their homes and businesses, and attended a Communal Bank meeting. Here are 3 of my favorite photos from the day, as well as some of what I learned about their businesses from the clients.
Continue Reading 15 July 2011 at 09:26 JohnGwillim 3 comments
Adapting to Change: Lessons from Lebanon
“What can we do, but wait and see” a borrower told me a couple of days after the highly anticipated speech by Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah. Adapting to new environments can be tough, but adapting to ever-changing uncertainty is even tougher and it’s a skill that the people of Lebanon have mastered.
Continue Reading 13 July 2011 at 10:00 Heba Gamal 3 comments
Update from the Field: Dangerous Streets, New Vocabulary + A Senegalese Spring
Compiled by Kathrin Gerner, KF15, Togo
This week, the Kiva fellows invite you to accompany them across Africa and South and Central America: Take a walk in the streets of San Salvador. Improve your language skills by adding a few words in three of South Africa’s most widely spoken languages to your vocabulary. Look poverty in the face in Cameroon. Continue by learning more about the latest riots in Senegal. Find out how money helps to provide dignity in Ecuador. And finish by learning about the importance of family unity in El Salvador.
Continue Reading 11 July 2011 at 02:00 Kathrin Gerner 5 comments
Prehistoric Drawings and Four Intertwined Client Visits
An intense trip thought the rural mountains of eastern El Salvador made us think about the importance of family unity through the clay and string and flour that intertwine these 4 stories.
The day began with a visit to a cave which has prehistoric drawings that date back thousands of years. Our attention was drawn to several of the figures which were of couples holding hands. We didn’t think much of it then, but that image stayed with us as the day unfolded.
One client visit was to a young woman who weaves hammocks. She invited us in to her house: a tiny shack made of wood, bamboo, cane, and tin with a dirt floor and walls covered with newspaper. Inside was barely room for a bed, a finished hammock and one being made. She uses loans from PADECOMSM to buy materials to make hammocks, improve her house and pay off her small lot all by herself – in tears, she told us that she had recently become a single mother. Her six year-old son recently suffered a facial paralysis when his father left.
Continue Reading 9 July 2011 at 10:56 john.beckwith.farmer 5 comments
Mud Walls to Mechanical Looms: Borrowers’ Stories
By Megan Bond, KF15, Ecuador
Eight years ago, Manuel told me, their house was very different from the one I was standing in. The walls were made of compressed earth and the roof was constructed out of dried straw. Manuel, his wife Cristiana, and their six children struggled on a daily basis to make ends meet. Looking for a change, they sought their first loan from FODEMI. Eight years and eleven loans later, I stood in their new house/factory. The floors and walls were solidly constructed out of cement and the roof was metal. In the spacious rooms, family members and two hired employees worked at multiple looms weaving thread into cloth.
A Senegalese Spring?
by Tim Young, KF15, Senegal
“Y en a marre!” the radio shouts as our 4X4 makes its way along narrow dusty roads to a borrower meeting some 40 kms from Thies. It is the 28th June, the day after the latest serious riots here in Senegal and the four of us bouncing around in the car listen intently. Last night I arrived home to find the roundabout outside my flat once again blocked by burning tyres, while large crowds watched peaceably from the side roads.
Continue Reading 6 July 2011 at 06:19 letimyoung 11 comments
Faces of Poverty?
Do these disciplined happy high school students match our common image of poverty in places like Cameroon? Not really. But do their mothers, fathers, grandparents, or other guardian live on more than $2/day, the international marker for poverty? Probably not. Many live on their own, with extended family, or family friends, and earn money outside of school to pay for books and other fees. Furthermore, do these teens have easy access to potable water? Hardly. They most likely carry it in buckets from a public tap that may be shared among the entire village. Do these students have mosquito nets for nightly protection from the risk of malaria? Probably not.
Continue Reading 5 July 2011 at 11:08 faithgarlington 1 comment
Update from the Field: Zulu Weddings, More Country-Specific Microfinance + Fighting Crime
Compiled by Kathrin Gerner, KF15, Togo
Learn about the tradition of Zulu weddings in South Africa. Find out how Kiva’s partners adapt the concept of microfinance to fit their country’s specific needs: from loans targeting borrowers affected by emigration in Ecuador, over a preference for group loans in El Salvador, to lending coupled with various training programs in Rwanda. Finish off your weekly reading by learning about crime-fighting Kivans in Nicaragua.
Continue Reading 4 July 2011 at 02:30 Kathrin Gerner 8 comments
Video Blog: The Many, Many, Many Languages of South Africa
by Daniel Jung, KF15, South Africa
I am currently based in Richards Bay on the coast of KwaZulu-Natal, where Zulus comprise the strong majority of the population. This doesn’t mean that Zulu is the only language spoken. At the regional office of Kiva’s partner in South Africa, Women’s Development Businesses (WDB) , four different languages are regularly used. To try to keep everything straight, I compiled a handy chart of common phrases in these four languages. Unfortunately, this chart is really difficult to write on my hand:
| English | Zulu | Setswana | Tsonga |
| Hello | Sawu Bana | Dumelang | Kunjhani |
| Thank you | Ngi Bonga | Kealeboga | Inkomu |
| Yes | Yebo | Ke dumalana le wema | Ina |
| No | Cha | Nyaa | Ee |
| Sorry | Ngi yalisa | Ke kopa tshwarelo | Ndzi Khomele |
| Good bye | Salekahle | Salang Sentle | Salani Kahle |
Walking the Streets
Walking in San Salvador is the stuff nightmares are made of, but not for the reasons you might think.
You have probably heard about the dangers of walking the streets in big cities in Latin America: you’ll be pick-pocketed, purse-snatched, robbed at gunpoint, sequestered, murdered… Those are real threats, but I’d like to discuss a few others that don’t get as much headline space. Here is my list of Less-known Dangers of Walking the Streets of San Salvador.
1) Razorwire is everywhere, often at eyelevel. Frequently it is accompanied by electric wire.
Continue Reading 3 July 2011 at 14:22 john.beckwith.farmer 2 comments
Fighting Crime…..Kiva Style
It all started on Friday night. After a very brief visit to an event celebrating the grand opening of a vegetarian café/yoga center here in Managua (certainly one of a kind for the region), I found that I was unable to insert the key into the driver’s side door. A few seconds later, I realized that this was the result of someone having forced a screwdriver into the lock, rendering it nonfunctional.
“Uh oh,” I thought, “this can’t be good.”
Expecting the vehicle to now be unlocked and subsequently empty, I pulled on the handle.
“Hey, good news! It’s still locked. Maybe they weren’t able to get in!”
It was true. The doors were indeed locked. The window, on the other hand, had proven to be slightly less formidable. And with that, I suddenly found myself with a few less possessions in the world.
Continue Reading 1 July 2011 at 17:00 Jason Jones 4 comments
More Than Just Money
One of the MFIs I am working with in Kigali is Urwego Opportunity Bank. In Kinyarwanda, Urwego literally means “to provide someone a ladder up”. Urwego does this not only by providing special loan products for those without access to traditional credit, but also by offering special training to its clients.
When asked to comment on these trainings, the Director of Transformational Impact at UOB said, “people often think that poverty is just financial deficit. However, it also means disempowerment. Training in household financial, business, and health management empowers people. Additionally, training clients helps them understand what will happen to their business if they get sick or mismanage their money.” The Director also noted that training client in these areas reduces risk for UOB, because the better the run the businesses are, the more steady the repayments of the loans.
