Kiva Stories from the Field

2007 Kiva Fellow, Shelby Clark, with friends in Mbale, Uganda

A Kiva Fellow’s primary responsibility is to chronicle the lives of the working poor. Each Fellow travels to and lives in the host country of one of our partner microfinance institutions (MFI) for a minimum of 10 weeks. During this time, the Fellow is immersed in the local culture, working with with the MFI’s loan officers, and conducting interviews with their client entrepreneurs, to capture and convey their lives and the impact of the Kiva loan. The descriptive and engaging journals they write (and the photos and videos) are regularly uploaded to Kiva.org and have a profound impact on connecting and personalizing the lives of our entrepreneurs for the Kiva Lender. By journaling on the behalf of our MFI partner, the Kiva Fellows are alleviating this task from the partner’s already overburdened workload, helping the MFI to be more successful at reaching potential lenders and potentially increasing the flow of Kiva Loans to that partner because of the human dimension the Fellows’ journals capture.

For more information about the Kiva Fellows Program, please see http://www.kiva.org/about/fellows-program.