Author Archive
Ensuring a manly man’s day
Maybe it's better to leave it to the professionals (Credit for photo goes to Aaro Ylitalo)
February 23rd was man’s day here in Kyrgyzstan. Actually it was Defenders of the Fatherland Day throught the former Soviet Union, but here in Kyrgyzstan that has morphed into man’s day. Many of you might be familiar with International Women’s Day which is coming up on March 8th, but until I got here to Kyrgyzstan I had not heard of its male equivalent. I decided to celebrate the day with a trip to visit an entrepreneurial eagle hunter working to set up a community based tourism project in his rural home town. (more…)
Kyrgyzstan post-revolution
Unfortunately the only time many people hear about Kyrgyzstan is in relation to political upheaval – but I suppose that is what happens when a country of five million people has two revolutions in five years.
Navigating the Social Performance Jungle
By Charlie Wood, Kiva Fellow in Kyrgyzstan
One of my first projects as a Kiva Fellow has been to work with MCC Mol Bulak Finance as they further develop their program of data gathering to quantify social performance. From my perspective as a lender, I imagined that measuring social performance would be a primary concern in the development of the microfinance industry, but in fact social performance management (SPM) is just emerging in the last several years as a best practice. In many ways this is because the lack of either a standardized methodology or ideology in regards to what constitutes social performance. One of the attractive features of Kiva.org is that Kiva vets microfinance institutions (MFI), seeking out organizations that adhere to multiple bottom lines. While some argue that the simple act of supplying credit to individuals without access gives clients financial freedom and should be given blanket encouragement, numerous examples of profiteering and mismanagement have marred the image of microfinance over the past several years. A ballooning belief that microfinance is the panacea to poverty alleviation has been closely echoed by a ballooning in client over-indebtedness. This is due at least in part to a lack of adequate client protection principles(see SMART Campaign). These problems fuel the argument that unfettered microfinance is merely a tool to spread debt burden to the poor while sucking profits from marginalized groups. So how can one measure and present particular MFI social performance in a transparent way? (more…)
Kiva Financed Loans at a Lower Interest Rate?
By Charlie Wood, KF13, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan
One of the more difficult concepts to understand in the Kiva process is that while lenders do not receive interest on their loans and often carry the risk of default, borrowers do pay interest on loans financed through Kiva capital. Most of the time these rates are the same as those paid by borrowers receiving loans financed by commercial capital and carrying default risk.
How’s the weather?
By Charlie Wood, Kiva Fellow in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan with Mol Bulak Finance (MCC)
Preparing to move to Kyrgyzstan for an undetermined amount of time caused some anxiety to my house. Not the least of our concerns was what mother nature might dish out during the winter in a place so close to Siberia. The day before I left the U.S., wracked with an LSAT induced cold, my mom made sure I was ferried to the local REI to stock up on long underwear. Yet like with many things in life, the reality has been a bit underwhelming so far. I haven’t even needed to wear the ushanka I bought on my second day here. That’s not to say that the weather hasn’t been unique.
