Author Archive
Update from the Field: Adapting for Borrowers by Borrowers, Microinsurance +SKFL
Compiled by Jim Burke, KF16, Nicaragua
A Warm Welcome! Manana offers the best from her garden. By DJ Forza, Georgia
This week’s Fellows Blog focuses on adaptability: Adapting microinsurance to poor households in Indonesia, an MFI in Turkey adapts to the needs of women entrepreneurs, a multifaceted borrower in Nepal adapts to market pressures, and a Kiva Fellow adapts to changing expectations. In a continuation of The Stuff Kiva Fellows Like series we hear how different fellows have adapted to their lives abroad by ‘crashing parties’ and ‘going to the Bazaar’. We hear about how practitioners are adapting finance and microinsurance products to their borrowers. Equally nimble we hear from a few borrowers and how they have expertly adapted to market pressures and changing circumstance. Microfinance is a dynamic industry by nature and like DJ or Binu or Maya Enterprise for Micro Finance, ensuring success means staying flexible and welcoming new opportunities born out of challenges. (more…)
Stuff Kiva Fellows Like #10-17
Compiled by Jim Burke, KF16, Nicaragua
We are Kiva Fellows. This is the stuff we like. Here is an insider (often critical, or satirical but always true!) view of what it means to be a Kiva Fellow and promote access to financial services around the world. From party crashing to bazaars to street food, these are the things we like and thrive on. Check out Stuff Kiva Fellows Like (SKFL) #1-9!
#10 Street Food
Mariela Cedeño, KF16, Cochabamba, Bolivia
I’m not really sure why, but there is something inherently appealing to a Kiva Fellow’s being about food that is prepared, cooked, and sold on the streets. Perhaps it’s the dubiously hygienic food preparation, the alternative cooking apparatus used to bring food to fire, or it’s ready availability and our relative laziness…wait, no, it’s actually our need to literally ‘taste’ the local culture. In our fits of street food deliriousness we are open and ready to taste all that our surroundings have to offer, however, we often find that the local fare may not quietly find a home in our stomachs. Thankfully, before leaving to our local assignments, our travel nurses reminded us that in times of intestinal woe, Cipro and other like antibiotics will be our best friend. They sometimes are, but because we are well versed in the dangers of overusing antibiotics and are haunted by nightmares of creating giant super bacteria that start kidnapping local women and children, we use them sparingly and wisely. (more…)
Red and Black to Pink, Peace and Love: The Reign of Daniel
By Jim Burke, KF16, Nicaragua
Daniel Ortega just won a landslide victory to be reelected president of the Republic of Nicaragua.The elections have been wrought with controversy. Human rights groups, opposition parties and the international community doubt the authenticity and transparency of the elections and many citizens feel the elections where robbed by Ortega. Nobody is surprised.
It seemed clear, even impossible that Daniel Ortega would lose re-election. The Sandinista Party, FSLN, are by far the most powerful political party in Nicaragua. A very fragmented opposition offered voters little choice than to ‘continue the revolution’ with Daniel. Cause for alarm has been the amount of power consolidated by the Sandinistas after Sundays elections. The FSLN won 13 parliament seats while the strongest opposition party, PLI, only earned 6 seats. The PLC gained 1 seat and the ALN and APRE got nothing. Check out the full election results in the La Prensa.
So, how has the FSLN consolidated so much power under Daniel? (more…)
High-tops in The Commercial Jungle: The Life of a Shoe Salesman
by Jim Burke, KF16, Nicaragua
Marcial Salvador selling high-tops
Mercado Oriental spans 60 city blocks and is the largest in Central America. The market is a jungle of stalls, pushcarts, alleyways and low hanging clothes, fruits, and shoes. It’s a full sensory experience that is almost numbing in its frenetic energy. Flies on meats next to sexy new hair products, car parts and phone calls from the same vendor, sweet smells of fresh baked bread and shoe polish, this is where Marcial Salvador sells shoes.
Marcial Salvador has been working in this market in varying capacities for the last 45 years. He is a model borrower at AFODENIC and is on his 4rth Kiva Loan! (more…)
Stuff Kiva Fellows Like
Compiled by Jim Burke, KF16, Nicaragua
We are Kiva Fellows. This is the stuff we like. Here is an insider (often critical, or satirical but always true!) view of what it means to be a Kiva Fellow and promote access to financial services around the world. From alpaca fur to FSSs to ziplock bags, these are the things we like and thrive on.
#1 Being the first foreign person that somebody has ever seen in their life
Dave Weber, KF16, Cambodia
Few life experiences will measure up to the one where a Kiva Fellow is told that he or she is ‘the first foreigner that somebody has ever seen in their life’ (TFFPTSHESITL). This experience often comes with having ones hair and skin touched, which people in our home countries don’t find nearly as interesting. KFs know that their image will forever be bored into the mind of the Latino/African/Asian/MidEastern borrower since we assume they ‘never forget their first one.’
A Kiva Fellow will react to being TFFPTSHESITL in several ways. They will utilize social media to get the word out to 500 people in their friend list and possibly even engage the Stories from the Field blog to get the message out to potentially hundreds of thousands. It will also be the first story they tell supporters and people back home. Kiva Fellows will also often use the phrase, “I’m pretty sure I was the first foreign person to ever go there” when referring to locations, even if they’re talking about Machu Picchu or Angkor Wat or the running of the bulls or the Washington Monument.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to spend my holiday evening at a Cambodian air conditioned movie theater which I’m certain no foreign person has been to before and I will be TFFPTSHESITL to at least half of the moviegoers there to engage in the revelry entitled Cowboys vs. Aliens. (more…)
