Author Archive
iShop4microfinance, what do you shop 4?
Is there a way to make microfinance a part of your daily life, as you buy the things you need, or as you shop for presents for Christmas (always right around the corner?). Now there is a website which can help you do that, and all you have to do is click through it.
Infrastructure War: How Trying to Fix a Problem Can Sometimes Become a Fight
by Sam Kendall KF12 Tajikistan
Currently there is a conflict brewing in Central Asia. The conflict is between a few different countries, and the cause is infrastructure. We’ve learned how infrastructure can raise costs of microfinance. Learn how it can raise costs of regular items, and the cost of nationalistic tendencies.
(with videos)
Cotton: Blessed Curse or Cursed Blessing
by Sam Kendall KF12 Tajikistan
(with pictures)
I never thought my Kiva Fellowship would deal so much with cotton, without actually dealing with cotton. Today one thing Central Asia, especially Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, are known for is cotton, if they are known at all (All make top 10 list of cotton exporters). In Tajikistan it is everywhere, with pictures of cotton and even statues of cotton, the state symbol also has cotton on it. Cotton has driven much of the history of Central Asia and Tajikistan. So one begins to wonder: how did cotton become such an important crop, and what has been its consequences?
“We Started Education.”
by Sam Kendall KF 12, Tajikistan
She looked at me very sternly, as if I had said something wrong, I knew that her students must be very obedient, because she was arguably the most intimidating teacher I had met in a post-soviet country, and I had met a lot of them. Rosa, as she wanted me to call her, even though it wasn’t her name, was a teacher in secondary school.
“You must, um, understand Sam,” she started out as if trying to figure out how to word her sentences correctly in English, “Tajikistan today, is not all of the land of Tajiks. Samarkand and Bukhara are also part of the wider land of Tajiks.”
“Ok Rosa,” I began to respond, “but what does that have to do with my question on education.”
She looked at me with her withering look again, I realized that it wasn’t mean, it was just impatient. I had become one of her students, and one who seemed to have a knack for talking back.
Poverty and Paroxysm: an International Day of Peace Post
The first news reports on BBC, CNN, and AP said that the bomb went off at 8:10 in the morning. I swear though, that I heard it at 8:04. Its not every day that a young American not serving in the armed forces hears an explosion as they gets ready for work, but for Kiva Fellows, this isn’t out of the realm of possibility.
Mergers in Microfinance: What to do with Tajikistans 100+ MFI’s
By Sam Kendall
There are 100 or more different microfinance institutions in Tajikistan, a country slightly smaller than Wisconson. Is this an over-saturation of the market? -Maybe.
But if it is, what can be even done with over-saturation, a problem few thought would ever befall microfinance?
Read about the newest problem effecting today’s microfinance community and the growing solution to it.
A Sweet Recipe: How You Can Help an Economy
by Sam Kendall KF 12 Tajikistan
As this is food month on Kiva, I’ve decided to talk about how food relates to you, microfinance, and an entire countries economy. And as an added bonus, I give you a recipe based on fresh fruits and vegetables I’ve found in the market “Tajik Summer on Rice”
“The Stork and the Golden Grain”
by Sam Kendall KF 12 Tajikistan
I recently began work at MDO Arvand, formerly MicroInvest. Arvand has created an interesting way to explain Microfinance to its clients and their children. Using a Tajik Fairy Tale it has written a small book that it hands out to its clients titled “The Stork and the Golden Grain”.
Is that even a real country? Q and A about Tajikistan
By Sam Kendall KF12 Tajikistan
As one of the new Kiva Fellows who will be in the field by the end of month, I bubble with excitement about going to a foreign country and helping Kiva. I tell anyone who asks that I am going to Tajikistan, usually with a big smile, or at least excitement in my voice.
People usually look at me with the squinty eyed pondering look, then I get asked a lot of the same questions. I try to answer some of them here for those who are curious.
