Posts filed under 'KF6 (Kiva Fellows 6th Class)'
Kiva Lenders Have Needs, Too
By Abby Gray, KF6 Togo and KF7 Senegal
Jacques, WAGES' Kiva Coordinator, and a colleague taking a boat to visit a Kiva client in a rural area.
Meet Jacques. He’s the Kiva Coordinator at WAGES, a microfinance institution (MFI) based in Togo, West Africa. Every day, a loan officer hand-delivers a stack of borrower information forms and a USB chip full of photos. Jacques has trained the officers how to fill out the forms, use digital cameras, and get borrowers to smile and display their merchandise proudly for pictures.
Jacques formats the pictures, writes the information into paragraphs, and uploads everything to Kiva’s website. Then, during the loan cycle, he reports repayments manually and visits borrowers to collect a progress update and take yet another picture.
The work is inefficient, tedious, and time-consuming.
But it’s worth it. (more…)
9 comments 20 October 2009
Power to the People
By Abby Gray, KF6 Togo and KF7 Senegal
How a Kiva Fellow Alumna’s non-profit organization, SunPower Afrique, is shedding light on MFIs in West Africa
“Beep,” complained my laptop, unhappy about its sudden switch to battery power. The fan above me whirred gently to a stop, no longer drying the beads of sweat incessantly forming on my forehead. “Page can not be displayed,” grumbled Firefox. My internet connection was gone, along with any hope I had of uploading my stack of borrower profiles to the Kiva website.
I walked out into the hallway and found the employees of my Senegalese microfinance institution slowly leaking out of their offices as well. We pulled up chairs in a circle, sat down, and prepared to sweatily twiddle our thumbs until the power gods had mercy on us, whether in ten minutes or ten hours.
An employee at FECECAV, a Togolese MFI, tracking loan repayments by hand. Many of FECECAV's branches operate without electicity.
Power cuts are a regular occurrence in West Africa, as in most parts of the developing world. Production and distribution of electricity are unable to meet demand, causing frequent rolling blackouts and interrupted service. For MFIs (and many other businesses), this means countless manpower hours lost, high overhead costs, low employee morale, a short shelf-life for office equipment and other low efficiencies in daily operations. These consequences are even more debilitating for MFIs who work with Kiva – the Kiva partnership depends on technology and internet connectivity to successfully fund loans for enterprising clients. Gasoline-powered generators, the obvious alternative, represent a significant up-front investment and are extremely costly to run and maintain.
So, what can be done to provide MFIs with a reliable source of power??
Enter Kira Costanza, the courageous Kiva Fellow Alumna, galloping in on her trusty steed named Solar Power!
4 comments 19 August 2009
Should all kids want to be a doctor or astronaut? Maybe…
By Milena Arciszewski, KF8 – Community Economic Ventures Inc. – Philippines
The backdrop for my ah-ha! moment
Yesterday I had a thoughtful conversation with a CEV Loan Officer, over a bowl of soup. She told me about a recent interview she had with a young boy. She asked him about his dream for the future, and was disappointed when he answered: “When I grow up, I want to be strong so that I can carry heavy boxes like my father.” This boy doesn’t dream about becoming a pilot, or a doctor, or an astronaut. He dreams of becoming strong so that he can carry heavy boxes.
The Loan Officer looked at me and said firmly: “The worst part of poverty here is that it takes away people’s ability to dream.”
One of my favorite quotes is by Martin Luther King, Jr: “If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.’ There is a strange beauty to that boy who dreams of carrying heavy boxes. He sees honor in the job and his highest aspiration is to be strong so that he can do the job well. And that’s okay. It is not my place to judge his dreams or expect them to match mine. I responded to the Loan Officer that I think it’s a fine for him to have that dream, as long as it makes him happy.
“No, you don’t understand,” she answered. “That boy isn’t dreaming about carrying boxes because that will make him happy. He dreams of carrying boxes because that is all he knows. He is so poor that he doesn’t know what else to dream about.”
I had my ah-ha! moment. That’s why microfinance institutions exist. It’s not just about giving poor people the ability to grow their business. It’s about giving poor people the chance to live a better like so that they have the ability to dream.
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- A CEV borrower poses with her baby pig
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- A CEV borrower poses before her rice field
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- A CEV borrower with her recycled goods
Milena Arciszewski has a year-long Kiva fellowship. She is currently on her last placement at Community Economic Ventures, Inc. (“CEV”) in Tagbilaran City, Philippines. She has also spent time with Kiva partners in Bosnia and Kenya. For a list of CEV’s fundraising loans, click here.
9 comments 21 July 2009
Microfinance through New-York-Colored Glasses
By Abby Gray, KF6/7, Togo & Senegal (now in New York)
In Dakar, this ad provoked vandals to rebel against the culturally inappropriate image. In New York, it wouldn't get a second glance.
If you have to deal with culture shock after 8 months of living in West Africa, New York is one of the most dramatic places to do it. On one hand, the vibrancy and energy of pedestrian-filled, trafficky New York streets isn’t all that different from the dusty “rues” of Dakar. Colorful fruit carts still grace the sidewalks, and overhearing conversations in foreign languages is a daily occurrence. On the other hand, skyscrapers and giant billboards of half-naked models are everywhere, as are exorbitant price tags on everything from purses to sushi dinners.
Having completed my official Kiva duties, I am now doing research at the Financial Access Initiative (FAI), a microfinance think-tank of sorts. It’s a consortium of researchers from NYU, Harvard, Yale, and Innovations for Poverty Action, focused on expanding access to quality financial services for low-income individuals. (more…)
4 comments 14 July 2009
Upending microcredit: Cambodians use Kiva to lend to U.S. borrowers
This Wednesday marked a watershed moment for Kiva.org: borrowers from the U.S. made a well-publicized debut on the person-to-person microlending website. It left no doubt that microcredit, seen by many as the province of the poor, had arrived to serve Americans in need.
The floodgates are open, and they sluice both ways.
Kiva’s launch of lending in the U.S. has impassioned many, including a group of people in Cambodia near and dear to me — the staff of Maxima Mikroheranvatho, a Kiva partner microfinance institution where I was a Kiva Fellow from October 2008 to February 2009.
As Kiva ambassador-in-the-trenches at Maxima, one of the things I’d tried to impress upon them was the satisfaction I get out of being a Kiva lender. So when my posting at Maxima ended earlier this year, I’d settled on the perfect gift to help them understand this: a Kiva gift certificate.
Over our farewell dinner in Phnom Penh, I pulled out a printout of the Kiva gift certificate page and presented it to the senior managers at Maxima. As they’re in the business of microlending, minor disbelief ensued. Kiva!? Who would they lend to? When I told them that Kiva was considering launching in the U.S., excitement erupted.
9 comments 12 June 2009
What if Kiva had Green Microloans?
If Kiva had green microloans would you support one? Subsidizing initial costs allows borrowers to participate in projects that are beneficial for their business, health, and the environment.
Continue Reading 31 comments 3 June 2009
BRAC – like Risk, but without the risk
The concept of risk has been discussed by many, and often, over the past year, as citizens around the world voice their concerns about the global recession. Mortgage risk, loan risk, credit risk, bailout risk, risk assessment, risk of spending too much, risk of spending too little, and on and on. A lot of risky business (and not the underwear dance kind) has been going on and we are paying for it now in all too literal a way.
There is another kind of risk though; one that I think some of you may be familiar with. That’s right, it’s Risk, as in epic board game, world domination style Risk.
I have been thinking about this particular kind of Risk lately due to the fact that while working with the Kiva field partner BRAC, I cannot escape how much the organization makes me think of the game, with its trademark little army men taking control of continents and sweeping across the globe in the attempt to gain complete domination of the two dimensional board game-world.
Only in BRAC’s case, the army is not little plastic figures, but a human, benevolent BRAC army of Bangladeshis, Afghanis, Sri Lankans, Pakistanis, Southern Sudanese, Ugandans, and Tanzanians. And this is just the beginning – the army is growing, sweeping the globe, out to conquer the poverty of the world, one country at a time.
The figures in green represent BRAC, those in red...poverty.
Okay, my analogy may be getting out of hand at this point. “Out to conquer the poverty of the world” is definitely too melodramatic, but the quantity and quality of BRAC’s global work to improve the lives of those living in poverty is undeniably striking.
Created in 1972 as a small-scale relief and rehabilitation project that was designed as a response to the consequences of the liberation war in Bangladesh, BRAC has since evolved into the largest southern NGO in the world.
With its programs in Asia and Africa, BRAC provides services to more than 110 million people. These services include: microfinance, health, water and sanitation, education, adolescent education and life skills, agriculture, livestock, and other social development programs.
Poverty is a simple word for a complex beast – BRAC works to improve the quality of people’s lives using a holistic approach, with strategically linked programs that address the causes of poverty from multiple angles. This might mean that within a microfinance group, there will be a health worker providing medical supplies for her group members or that down the street from a microfinance meeting a client’s daughter will be learning about gender issues at an adolescent club.
5 comments 2 June 2009
Signing Off from Senegal
My memories of the last eight months away from home are a jumbled mass of color, freedom, fear, patience, frustration, and energy – raw, shifting memories that have not yet arranged themselves into neat, packageable stories that I can pull from the shelf at parties when I get home.
Watching Obama's Inauguration Speech on the Togolese Roadside
I have tested my sense of self against new backgrounds, ripped away the familiar context of home to hold my idea of “Abby” up to bright new lights. I have sometimes been ashamed of my reactions to new stimuli, and sometimes proud. Catching myself swearing under my breath at street children who asked a little too aggressively for money was not my finest moment; insisting that the Kiva Coordinator not fudge the dates to make loans eligible for Kiva’s website redeemed me.
I have learned about how microfinance operates on a day-to-day basis and about the difficulty of managing work and relationships across distances and cultures. Telling an MFI employee she did not have the IT competency necessary to be the Kiva Coordinator and watching her eyes tear up was my first real introduction to the uncomfortable realities of managing people. These challenges of human nature, of judgment, failure and success, cross all cultural boundaries.
Sunset Behind a Baobab, the National Symbol of Senegal
I have changed in many ways. After struggling for months with my pocket French dictionary, and then, this morning, listening to myself rattle off yet another training in French on sending journal updates to Kiva lenders, I felt like I had tangible proof of how I’ve grown since September. Other ways I’ve grown are less easy to put a finger on, and most will continue to be elusive for many months to come.
10 comments 26 May 2009
A 25 pound sack of sugar.
Despite entrepreneurial skills, and dedicated work ethic many entrepreneurs are a single business mistake, illness, or natural disaster away from starting at square one.
Continue Reading 3 comments 15 May 2009
The Kiva-TLM Calendar
On my previous blog post, 77 is never too old to start a business, Jan commented that she would like to see the result of our TLM Kiva T-shirt Bonanza which took place last week (she heard about it by following TLM on Twitter, to do the same go here).
Fortunately, this also gave me the perfect excuse to express my thanks to Jan and John for their unwavering support of Kiva and the Fellows programme. For those of you who don’t know of them, Jan and John are professional grandparents from Calgary, Alberta, in Canada. In between their time grandparenting, lending on Kiva, chatting on Kiva Friends.org and driving the school bus (John), they find time to read and comment on almost every blog written by the Kiva Fellows. Their comments are consistently supportive, positive, and uplifting, and I’m sure have provided much-welcomed comfort for many blogging Fellows.
Jan & John (photo from their Kiva lender page)
Thank you Jan and John! I know I’ve really appreciated your kind comments. This thanks is also directed at the many other regular readers and commenters, and Kiva Friends who keep the blog going. Unilove that means you! J&J, I hope you don’t mind me writing about you and posting your picture, Kiva have trained me so well I feel like I should be getting releases signed everywhere I go.
This is sadly my last day as a Kiva Fellow and my last day with TLM. They’ve just showered me with gifts and taken me out for a slap-up lunch. I’ve sold my helmet and various other bits and bobs I accumulated along the way. Everyone has been incredibly friendly and welcoming here, they really really have. Don’t forget to check out the new TLM website – their first proper one in 12 years of operation, I know it’s basic but it’s the first proper website I’ve made too! And watch out for more TLM loans and video journals coming soon, plus a very special video project which will hopefully be happening in June (unfortunately I won’t be here).
And without further ado, I present the TLM-Kiva Calendar… coming soon to a store near you… maybe
January: TLM actually stands for Tanned Lending Machines. (l-to-r: Lambert, Ellen, Ida, Lenny, Shanty, and Herto)
April: The look this spring - Ice white Kiva t-shirts with customized limited edition TLM decoration
June: The Kiva Team (left to right: Kieran, Vience, Shanty, and Roni)
November: We never turn our back on a client (except to show them our Kiva t-shirts)
Thanks to Darren at Kiva for providing the funds for t-shirts. They will be worn many times I promise (looking around the office as I write this I can see a few in full effect).
7 comments 8 May 2009
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