Posts filed under 'KF7 (Kiva Fellows 7th Class)'
More than micro CREDIT to the CO’s
By design, Microfinance is not sustainable without the dedication of hundreds of thousands of Credit Officers (CO’s) working for Microfinance Institutions (MFI’s) around the world. The Kiva online person-to -person (P2P) lending platform only works because CO’s employed by the 95 Kiva Field Partners in 44 countries are out visiting clients, taking pictures and writing business profiles for our website in addition to their regular loan disbursements and repayment collections. My job as a Kiva Fellow at AMK in Cambodia also relies heavily on the CO’s who bring me out to the field so that I can interview Kiva entrepreneurs and create journal updates that get sent to Kiva Lenders around the world.
AMK Credit Officer (CO) ready to ride
6 comments 8 June 2009
BRAC Tanzania Lending Team!
After reading my post about BRAC Tanzania a few days ago, I imagine that many of you are just chomping at the bit to get more involved with the organization.
Oh you absolutely are, you say?
Well, you’re in luck. There is a BRAC Tanzania Lending Team on Kiva.org that you can join and be surrounded by fellow BRAC Tanzania enthusiasts! We only have 8 members right now, so you should really go to the site, join the lending team and help our BRAC Tanzania Lending Team grow to be as massive as BRAC itself!
Thanks to those 8 people who have joined and together already made 6 loans toTanzanian women!
A BRAC Tanzania borrower makes a loan repayment in Zanzibar
Sarah Forbes was a KF6 in Kenya with K-MET and is now serving her KF7/8 placements with BRAC Tanzania. She is clearly very excited about the new BRAC Tanzania Lending Team. You should join, so she’ll stop harassing you about it.
1 comment 5 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
What is your Dream?
What is your dream for your future? As a Kiva Fellow living in Puno, Peru, writing journals for Kiva and Manuela Ramos entrepreneurs, this is a question I have asked approximately 150 women. Over the last three and a half months, one of my main responsibilities as a fellow has been to meet the entrepreneurs of Manuela Ramos who have been funded through Kiva and to write journals about their lives, their businesses and the loans that help them succeed in these businesses. In order to gather the information needed to write these journals, I travel to bank meetings or to the entrepreneur’s homes and ask them a series of questions: How long have you been with Manuela Ramos? Do you think that the loans from Manuela Ramos have helped your business? What successes or problems have you recently faced? Because many of the women entrepreneurs conduct similar businesses, their answers to these questions are often the same. However, the question that provokes the same response more than any other is “What is your dream for the future”.
6 comments 29 May 2009
Growing a Business, Saving a Child
An estimated half of Kenyans with AIDS are receiving anti-retroviral treatment, only about a third of Kenyan children are. How can micro-loans help change this?
Continue Reading 3 comments 29 May 2009
Finding Your Borrower Symphony No. 9
Three months ago, I came to Tarapoto, Peru armed with all sorts of tools to start my Kiva fellowship; cameras, powerpoint presentations about Kiva, books about microfinance, and a ton of information acquired during training at Kiva headquarters in San Francisco. While all these were useful, nothing could really prepare me for the most challenging part of my fellowship; finding the borrowers I had to interview to get journal updates for Kiva lenders. Just as my colleague Emily struggled to find Kiva borrowers in Puno, Peru, I had a similar set of challenges in the San Martin region, located further north in the Peruvian Amazon Basin.
As I finish my fellowship, it is time for a new cohort of fellows to take on the challenge. To the new KF8 class, I hope this video helps illustrate some of the challenges you will face. But before I sign off, one more word of advice: when you feel like pulling your hair out/crying/sighing loudly/giving up in frustration because you can’t find a borrower, just go to your happy place. And don’t pay attention to your wet socks.
Sending a shout out to the MFI staff who does this every day. From Tarapoto, Peru good bye and good luck!
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Hi, my name is Diana Rodriguez Wong reporting from Tarapoto, Peru.
To support Peruvian women entrepreneurs please visit the Manuela Ramos/CrediMUJER loan page or join the new Manuela Ramos lending team.
4 comments 28 May 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.
11 comments 26 May 2009
On legal courts and stock markets
Courts and stock markets appear to have very little in common. The first are a revered part of most countries’ legal infrastructure; we cannot imagine life without them. The second, seem to bounce from loved to hated and back again in a matter of hours and are often far from respected; some countries even believe they can do without them altogether. But what do they have in common?
They both play important roles in checking the status quo. Both institutions are often the only places that can bring powerful people and institutions to account for their deeds. Courts, with their sacrosanct independence from politics and private interests, are able to bring down decisions punishing anyone that violates the law or does not honor a contract. Stock markets, for their part, can punish companies that are not fully dedicated to implementing the strategy they promised their shareholders they would adhere to and implement successfully.
2 comments 26 May 2009
I Don’t Want to Stop Being a Kiva Fellows 7th Class (Welcome KF8!)
The members of the seventh Kiva Fellows class (KF7) recently received some rather startling news: Kiva is sending out reinforcements. The team in San Francisco rounded up a new bunch of smart, capable, passionate people (creatively referred to as KF8) to fan out across the globe where they will meet Kiva borrowers, write journal updates, post enriching and exciting material to this blog, raise awareness about the work of their respective host institutions, and take cold showers for two to four months.
Upon hearing the news, Brett Dobbs (KF7, Kenya) and I were overwhelmed with all sorts of emotions. What if everyone likes KF8 better? What if they write more journals than we did? What if they have stronger stomachs or figure out how to talk to a borrower without falling off a chair into the dirt? What are we, a group of rugged, field tested KF7’s, supposed to do when our Kiva-ness is threatened by some newly minted, probably-smarter-than-us KF8’s?
And…
Looks like even though I’m not taking the news well, Brett’s pretty confident that we’re the best ever. So I guess until KF8 starts out-journal posting, out-blogging, and out-awesome-ing us, I’ll hold off on finding a way to get rid of the KF7 Para Siempre tattoo I got last week.
Welcome, congratulations, and good luck KF8!
19 comments 22 May 2009
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