Author Archive
Reflections from Eight Months in the Field
By Eric Burdullis, KF12, Cusco, Peru
Last July, I sat in Kiva headquarters listening to speaker after speaker desperately trying to get a grasp on what life as a Kiva fellow would be like. Despite all my “international” experience, I don´t think anything could have prepared me for the adventure that was to come. Personally, I set out to discover how microfinance worked, IF it worked, and how it impacted the lives of the people it touched, but I really had no idea what lay ahead of me.
Wait, What Do You Do Again?
By Eric Burdullis, KF12, Cuzco, Peru
As a Kiva Fellow, no two days are the same. One morning I will wake up at 5am to try to visit a borrower before they head out to work, and the next I’ll be in the office uploading loans or training the Kiva team on how to take a great picture or write a journal worth reading. In fact, as a Kiva Fellow, our job is so diverse that the Kiva staff creates long lists of things for us to do called deliverables. My favorite on these “To Dos” is Borrower Verifications. Essentially, we go into the field and do a spot check to make sure that information uploaded on the Kiva website is real.
Catching the Christmas Spirit
By Eric Burdullis, KF12, Cuzco, Peru
First of all, I love Christmas. The tree, Christmas lights (you can ask my parents about what I did to our house when I was a little kid), hot cider, going over to Grandma´s house on Christmas Eve, eating tamales (everyone has their own Christmas traditions), the stockings, Eggs Benedict Christmas morning, watching my Beagle open up his gifts. The feeling of being around those who you love and those who love you. I love all of it.
A Look Under the Hood (Fine-tuning an MFI for 2011)
By Eric Burdullis, KF12, Cuzco, Peru
Last weekend, I had the chance to attend Asociación Arariwa´s year end planning retreat out in the Sacred Valley in Urubamba, Peru. More than just spending the weekend having fun with my co-workers at the institution, I was excited to finally see what a microfinance institution (MFI) really is about. On one hand as a Kiva Fellow, I get a very in depth look at how my MFI works, but on the other hand, Kiva is still perceived as a funding source for the MFI so they are constantly “putting their best foot forward”. Arariwa´s 2011 strategic planning retreat was a way for me to see, internally, what microfinance meant to this MFI in Cuzco.
Living the Dream
By Eric Burdullis, KF12, Cuzco, Peru
Back when I was just a Kiva lender, I thought how cool it would be to meet one of the borrowers that I had lent too. I mean that is what just about every Kiva lender dreams of, right? You lend out to people halfway across the world all based off of a couple of paragraphs on a website and a 3” by 5” photo. But you never really think twice about how real the needs of the people you are lending money to are or what difference the loan will mean in the borrowers life.
The Kiva Community
By Eric Burdullis, KF12, Cuzco, Peru
I am always surprised by the power of online social media and networks. Facebook, Twitter, blogging sites like this Wordpress one, dating sites like eHarmony, sharing sites like Freecycle or rating ones like Yelp all command huge followings and powerful networks. The world becomes smaller thanks to sites like Facebook—it is sites like these that allow me to keep in touch with friends while I serve abroad as a Kiva Fellow. Information gathering and sharing from news, to politics, to microfinance happenings or even the latest costume that friends have caused their pets to suffer through becomes easier thanks to Twitter and the ever expanding blogging community. You can connect to date, to recycle, to rate. You make connections with old friends and new ones who share common interests.
Bringing you more than just credit
By Eric Burdullis, KF12, FAPE, Guatemala
I have written a lot about the auxiliary services offered by microfinance institutions in Guatemala. One blog, Going the Distance, reflected ASDIR´s additional services from insurance to bill pay, and my last blog, Good Medicine, spoke a little about FAPE´s new medical services program. Why do you care? As other Kiva Fellows have stated, microfinance is not the silver bullet that will knock out poverty, it is merely the start. This being said, it will be microcredit coupled with access to basic services such as health, insurance, savings, and education that alleviates poverty, not just microcredit alone.
Good Medicine
By Eric Burdullis, KF12, FAPE, Guatemala.
For most, take your medicine! conjures up negative images of spoonfuls of cherry cough syrup or days spent in bed with the flu. For the clients of one microfinance institution, FAPE, based out of Guatemala City, Guatemala, it is something much sweeter. FAPE recently teamed up with the Canadian Government and an NGO “Gems of Hope” to provide low cost medicine and medical consultations to its clients as well as free health education.
How it works. A Gems of Hope team arrives to the village bank meetings with FAPE´s loan officer. After loan repayments are collected, one member of the Gems of Hope team does a presentation specifically targeted to women.
Going Above and Beyond
By: Eric Burdullis, KF12, ASDIR
I was impressed. When I first stepped into ASDIR´s office, I was confronted with half a dozen banners listing the details of all the services they offer. The first banner was for Seguros Columna: an insurance agency that ASDIR pays for to offer life insurance to its clients (essentially, if a client dies, ASDIR cancels the loan: a great service for the family of someone in poverty). A second and third advertised a service to send and receive remittances through Western Union and Sigue. A fourth advertised saving services through G & T Continental (microfinance institutions can´t accept savings legally here in Guatemala). The fifth advertised payment by check as well as bill pay for water and electricity, and the sixth advertised prepaid cell phones. All this on top of a wide variety of loan products from small Q1000 loans to women with only the idea of a business within village banks to Q70,000 loans to medium sized businesses; from loans being used to improve housing to emergency loans for personal consumption.
Tough Conversations
By Eric Burdullis, KF12, FAPE/ASDIR, Guatemala
I started this blog on a scrap of paper during a group visit. I started writing because, well, I felt uncomfortable. I wasn´t quite sure what my place in the conversation should be or even what my facial expressions should be. And this wasn´t the first visit I felt uncomfortable on that day.
I wanted to give Kiva lenders updates, journal postings, on a couple of lenders that had fallen behind in their payments…way behind. And now, the loan officer, the operations manager and I were at their homes or their places of business trying to figure out why this had happened, and how they could get back on track with their payments.
Where there is Poverty: Broken Windows and Armed Robbery
By Eric Burdullis, KF12, FAPE, Guatemala City, Guatemala.
…But today, we stopped at a gas station so my ride could run to the ATM before work. Locking my door, I hid my camera and backpack out of sight and the two of us walked into the station. Two minutes later, when we walked out from the store, my heart dropped. Shattered glass is strewn in the spot next to ours. I secretly hope it´s not our car but know that it is. Running to the car, my door was unlocked and I already knew the rest. My backpack, with both my cameras (one my baby D90), my laptop and all my Kiva work vanished into thin air.
The Best Story
By: Eric Burdullis, KF12, Guatemala
“Again it might have been the American tendency to travel. One goes, not so much to see but to tell afterward” John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley. As a Kiva Fellow, I travel differently. I have too. Instead of trying to throw myself into those great stories that I could tell over and over to friends—about the times when I sipped mate with Argentine gauchos on the Pampa or hiked Machu Picchu in the pouring rain, I am looking for a different story.
