Posts filed under ‘Kenya’
A Kiva Entrepreneur Meets YOU!
On February 17, 2010, I introduced the Kiva world to Robert Nandemu, a mixed farmer in western Kenya taking out a $1,050 loan. This week, the opposite holds true, as earlier today Robert met the 39 lenders to his loan!
Kiva’s newest cash cow: Juhudi Kilimo
Hezron Murinde is a happy man. After 20 years of subsistence farming in a hilly region of Kenya’s Central Province, he’s earning a profit. It started with a chaff cutter. A chaff cutter is a big, cranky device that chops feed into small enough pieces for livestock to eat (and livestock eat a lot). The chaff cutter led to the cow. Not just any cow, but a high-yield dairy cow that produces enough milk to out-gross all the maize and beans Hezron grows across acres of land.
Hezron and his watermelon-eating cow
It’s a Whole New World…
So imagine your first week as a Kiva Fellow placed at a microfinance institution in Nairobi, Kenya. Think about what the place may look like, how the people will greet you, and the overall atmosphere of the office. Now scrap all that, because my first few days at Juhudi Kilimo have been so far above and beyond anything I could have imagined.
The Last Days of the Dodo
by Avani Parekh-Bhatt, Kiva Fellow at SMEP in Nairobi, Kenya.
The "dodo" bird from SMEP
Jambo! I’d like to introduce myself, My name is Avani Parekh-Bhatt, I’m a 9th class Kiva Fellow and the last of my class to get to the field in Kenya. I hail from Durham, North Carolina. I believe in the power of human relationships, and grassroots led development, and I want to see the real nuts and bolts of microfinance, so that’s why I applied to be a Kiva Fellow (and to start my own microfinance organization one day.)
At my second day on the job at a Kiva fellow at my MFI, I looked out of my window in the marketing office, and saw in the garden the vestige of a time gone by, a bird that to me looked exactly like a dodo bird. You remember learning about the dodo –it’s now extinct, but living on in the faded black line drawings in elementary school textbooks. It struck me today that I am witnessing the death of the dodo at my MFI, and the creation of an entirely new species of organization.
Swahili Lesson 1: The Habari Family and Learning English in Kenya
By Hanna Azemati, KF9 Kenya
Our first Swahili class in the early morning tranquility of the still shuttered Prestige Plaza cafeteria in Kilimani was interjected with a myriad of embarrassing anecdotes of faux pas called forth by each new lesson that Lucy taught us. As Anne, Rachel and I, the three Nairobi Kiva Fellows, can attest, it behooves anyone new to Kenya to learn Swahili as promptly as possible and not because Kenyans don’t speak English. In fact, most Kenyans speak both official languages, English and Swahili, in addition to one of the sixty regional Bantu, Nilotic or Cushitic tribal languages. But as Lucy put it, “You can’t teach Swahili without teaching culture. And you might even find yourself learning some more English.” As we reviewed in our minds every interaction so far had to gauge the damage, we realized that the inverse is true also: without the linguistic investment, much of the inextricably linked Kenyan culture had escaped us.
Jua Kali: Running a blanket-based business
Jua Kali translates as under the hot sun in Kiswahili but in Kenya it’s a term meant to describe businesses in the “informal sector.” Jua Kali businesses have slightly less infrastructure than your typical lemonade stand. Often times they are just a blanket or some plastic sheeting on the ground, secured with rocks and displaying some limited inventory. The business location is the side of the road or a front stoop (though it still requires a permit).
Sicily has had a used clothing store for the last three years.
The upside of a Jua Kali business is the small amount of capital required to start up but the downsides are rain and wind and dust, theft, lack of storage, and unpredictable fees from police and other officials. But these business people are most concerned with the limited profit margin of an outdoor, blanket-based business because these lemonade stands must support whole families. A small profit also makes it almost impossible to expand, like buying more or different inventory or building a business premises.
Take a look at some other Jua Kali entrepreneurs in Nairobi that Kiva lenders have funded through Faulu Kenya, helping them begin to expand. (more…)
Nyanya (The Grandmother)
By Anne Hector, KF9, Kenya
At two months into my Kiva fellowship (and woefully late on my blogs…), I have now interviewed more than 50 micro-borrowers. The individuals I have met are always moving and impressive, but Jeska Silivano Mlanya truly stands out for her strength, warmth, and resourcefulness. Just take a moment and look at that face…!
Pedestrian in Nairobi
By Hanna Azemati, KF9 Kenya
Nairobi is dangerous, polluted and sinister. Nairobi is generous, beautiful and lively.
I woke up on my third morning in Nairobi to the twittering of a myriad of birds intermingled with roosters crowing, the occasional neighbors greeting one another in Swahili and finally the church bells announcing that I could go back to sleep as it was only 6 am.
Where to hide your money
By Rachel Brooks, KF9, Faulu Kenya
You'll never find Samuel's cash
The bed is the most common location, according to the Kenyans I asked. But the specific location varies. You can simply keep it between the mattress and the metal box springs or under your pillow or sheet, or you can be more creative. For instance, wrap the bills in paper and place them under one of the legs of the frame to appear as though you are leveling an uneven bed.
The second most likely hiding place is in a hole. You can put your money in a can and bury it in the garden or if you have a dirt floor in your home, you can bury it inside. In some houses up-country, the walls are also constructed from mud so you can create a sort of wall safe. The downside to these hiding places is the real threat of flood, fire, and insects. (more…)
Transparency: Not Just for Lenders
By Maia Pelleg, KF9, Kenya Agency for the Development of Enterprise and Technology (KADET)
This video was filmed in response to the following interaction I had with a borrower group outside of Nairobi, Kenya…
“Habari. Nina itwa Maia,” I practice saying as I walk into my first group meeting of the day. A KADET credit officer named Gachi,and I are visiting Kiva borrowers living in Kamae, a slum-like area filled with tin huts and roads littered with garbage and roaming animals. Almost all Kiva borrowers here lack formal education and exposure to English, and I wanted to make sure that I could at least introduce myself in their language. I take my seat on a long sturdy bench and face a group of 12 borrowers sitting in four straight rows before me. With perfect posture, the borrowers stare earnestly at Gachi, waiting for an explanation as to why a mzungu (white person) is joining their meeting.
A round of introductions begins, translated by Gachi, and I learn that the group’s name is Kihatu, meaning broom. When they hear their group name announced to me, every single borrower’s face breaks into a proud grin. Until now, the groups I have met have names that translate to English words like lion, opportunity, and faith. Puzzled by this self-designated title, I ask for insight into this choice. A willowy woman with a strong, clear voice responds and Gachi translates, “This is the first loan cycle for all of us in this group,” she says, “and each of us is looking to sweep away the problems of our past and the problems of luck. We are no longer going to depend on luck, but on ourselves.”
Big is beautiful in Kenya
by Rachel Brooks, KF9, Kenya
My favorite Kiva field partner before I started my fellowship was Kisimu Medical & Education Trust, here in Kenya. At K-MET, microfinance is a smaller part of a community-based health organization. They offer loans to providers (many of them volunteers) so that they can maintain or improve their clinics and services. And they have these wonderfully innovative programs to help women and improve reproductive health.
But as much as programs like these make me go weak at the knees, I’ve also really come around to loving what the scope and focus of a big MFI can offer. Big is beautiful.
Faulu's Director holds the BIG certificate
Faulu Kenya has more than 90 outlets across the country, over 1000 staff members, and a fairly large headquarters. They are laser-focussed on providing financial services to low-income people, with over 250,000 clients. They want to reach a million clients by 2011. (more…)
Microfinance for Beginners~
By Anne Hector, KF9 Kenya
When last I posted (http://tiny.cc/pl68v), I was preparing to plunge into Nairobi traffic with the redoubtable intern, Mary Chege, to visit the Kitengela branch to gather up loans and work with the lending officers on Kiva postings. (more…)
On the road with Pastor Zach
by Rachel Brooks, KF9, Kenya
Faulu Kenya, where I recently began as a Fellow, has a full-time Kiva Coordinator, Zachary Muriithi. He’s a busy guy. He works long hours at Faulu, manages his several small farms, helps run a home for 24 orphans, and preaches on Sunday. He has old and new friends wherever we go and has become an active user of Facebook, Twitter, and WordPress.
Still, Pastor Zach was excited for our first big task: completing a borrower verification process. We randomly picked ten of Faulu’s Kiva borrowers for a mini-audit and then appeared unannounced at their businesses to confirm their profile details. We really might as well have dropped a bag of marbles onto a map of Nairobi because the ten businesses could not have been farther apart but it was worth it.
(more…)
My Microfinance Institution
By Anne Hector, KF9 Kenya
My microfinance institution is the Small and Micro Enterprise Programme of Kenya (SMEP) and it is located in Nairobi… not at the foot of the Ngong Hills, I have to admit, but it is very very near Ngong Road. (more…)
Explaining Kiva
By Alison Carlman, KF8, Kenya
“ It’s this place, on the computer… like a bulletin board… where people post stories…”
Explaining Kiva isn’t easy. It wasn’t easy for me to explain Kiva to my Mom, (no offense, Mom) – so imagine me trying to explain Kiva to a Kenyan farmer who’s never touched a computer and never even heard of “the internet.”
As lenders, some of us hope that Kiva borrowers daydream about us in the way that we daydream about them. After all – we feel this connection with people half a world away because we’ve read their story and seen their photo – and we’ve shared a part of ourselves with them – a portion of our income, and perhaps a photo or a peak into our lending philosophy.
But as a Kiva Fellow it was my experience that many times borrowers know very little about their lenders. There are several reasons for this. The first – as I have alluded to – is the sheer difficulty of explaining Kiva to someone who has never heard of the internet, and cannot imagine how someone from Canada could know who they are. There is a steep learning curve along the road to understanding Kiva. (Read Matt Flannery’s blog article about an encounter gone wrong in this regard).
(more…)
On Buoyancy
by Joel Carlman, KF8
As I enter the final week of my Kiva Fellowship here in Kisumu, Kenya, I find myself thinking about what my time here has taught me. Kenya is so different from any place that I’ve ever been. The smiles are brighter, the hand-shakes longer, and the hospitality warmer than just about anywhere.
I know that I’m doing microfinance, and that Kiva is about borrowing and lending. The terms, the accounts, the figures, and financials are so interesting to me, and that can sometimes seem like what it is all about. During my fellowship, I dove deep into microfinance, and it’s tempting to look at everything through an analytical lens. Even as a student of development, I always want to find the golden thread that leads you from problem to solution through the complicated fabric of global and local issues.
But, even more than borrowing and lending, Kiva is about connecting. It’s hard enough to connect to people of your own background, from your own hometown, and of your own color, tribe, or social status. How can we possibly connect to people so different from us? I don’t know if I can really answer that question, but I am inspired to tell of the ways in which I have connected to this place during my fellowship.
Anything but Routine…Microfinance in Nairobi’s slums
By Jaclyn Berfond, KF8 Kenya
After a month of going out, interviewing borrowers every day, life can start to feel rather routine. Yet, all I have to do is look around – really look around at the slums where I have been working – and I know that Faulu’s work here in Nairobi is anything but routine.
Many fellows before me have offered poignant descriptions of slums around the world. Yet, I felt that the impact of the informal settlements (as they are so politically-correctly called) on my perceptions of poverty, economic empowerment and microfinance, as well as the impact on Nairobi and Kenya as a whole, merited yet another word on the subject.
It is estimated that over half of Nairobi’s population – around 2 million people – live in the city’s numerous informal settlements. Nairobi’s largest slum, and probably most infamous, is Kibera, home to over 1 million people. My work through Faulu has largely centered on the smaller Mukuru settlements. My first day in the Kwa Njenga section of Mukuru slum – where an estimated 75,000 people live on 80 acres of land (and these are only the official numbers) – was an experience like none I’ve ever had before. Walking for what felt like miles among shacks made of corrugated iron, navigating piles of garbage waiting to be burned, jumping over streams of waste winding through the makeshift streets, inhaling the fumes from the cars that attempted to squeeze through the giant maze of stalls and people…it was the making of a nightmare. Yet, for millions of people, this is reality.
Titus, a Faulu client in Mukuru
Kenya’s Post-Election Crisis Revisited.
By Alison Carlman, KF8, Kenya
Kenya’s post election violence is probably far from the minds of most people in the world. After all – the contested election and its ensuing rioting happened in late 2007, and that was years ago. (See Former Kiva Fellow Zack Turner’s blog post from 2008 here, describing the conflict.) Surely you’d think that people were recovering from the trauma and have moved on with their lives.
Yes and no.
In my first several weeks of borrower interviews, a few borrowers brought up the violence when asked I about their challenges. Many eyes even swelled up with tears as these Kenyans described what happened to their businesses and to their families in the aftermath.
Surprised by how close it all still felt to many of these people, I began to ask every borrower about the post-election violence and how it has affected their lives. They have remarkable stories. Peres Akinyi Mimba, for example, had a successful informal hardware business in 2007. “I had a big shop, I even had to transport things on lorries” she explained to me. But during the period of violence her shop was looted and she lost most of her goods were stolen. Now she is taking a loan out to help re-build her business back to where it was before – she currently just sells basic paints and nails, but she wants to sell a larger variety of hardware supplies.
Alison (right) interviewing Consolata (center), with help of K-MET translator, Debra (left)
Kiva Fellows in DeNile
By Jaclyn Berfond, Laura Buhler, Alison Carlman, Joel Carlman and Cameron Morris
Last weekend the East African Kiva Fellows delegation descended upon the bustling streets of Kampala, Uganda and the banks of the Nile River for two days of intense knowledge transfer and mild revelry. We spent hours discussing the importance of data validity in performing operational cost analyses and tried to debunk the myth that OpenOffice does not properly save .csv files for uploading repayment information to PA2. We also had a little fun. We left Kampala feeling refreshed and full of ideas to take back to our MFIs.
Now it’s your turn. We are officially issuing a challenge to the other regions (LAC, Asia, Western Africa and Eastern Europe) to prove that you are as united and have as much regional spirit as the East Africans. Excuses will not be tolerated. As Kiva Fellows this is a challenge you should be ready to take on. We did it, so can you. We also made an amazing video documenting our adventure. Check it out!
Jaclyn, Laura, Alison, Joel and Cameron are Kiva Fellows spread out over the East African Region. To read more about their experiences and their MFIs click on their names above.
Microentrepreneurs and Maxipads
By Alison Carlman, KF8, Kenya
Consider yourself warned: this blog talks about maxipads. There. I said it. Now please keep reading.
Perhaps you’ve heard of the “Girl Effect” campaign. The “Girl Effect” is a about investing in what Africans call the “girl child” and how that can affect a country’s development. According to The Girl Effect, an extra year in primary school statistically boosts girls’ future wages by 10% to 20%, and every additional year a girl spends in secondary school lifts her income by 15% to 25%. And you better believe that the size of a country’s economy is, in no small part, determined by the educational attainment and skill sets of its girls. For Kenya alone, if the 1.6 million teenage girls who drop out of school each year instead finished their secondary education, their incremental earning power would lift Kenya’s GDP by $27 billion over their lifetimes. Not to MENTION the impact it would have on the health and well-being of future families and children of these girls-turned-women.
But it’s not that easy just to “stay in school.” The girls I work with in Kisumu at K-MET’s Safe Space have dropped out of school, many because they became mothers during their teen years.
A Safe Space Member Working to Start a Tailoring Business
I’ve talked a little with these girls, and have learned some other things about why it is so difficult to stay in school. I learned that something as simple as “sanitary towels” (or maxipads -there, I said it again-) can make the difference whether or not girls miss 4 days of school each month and get hopelessly behind in their studies. These products are too expensive to purchase every month, and the alternative is to use unsafe materials (like chopped up pieces of mattresses or old newspapers) which cause infections, leading to more absenteeism.
Look – I realize that you didn’t check the Kiva blog to read about sanitary products. But aren’t you at least slightly incensed by the fact that the lack of these simple supplies keep girls and women from attending school, attending public meetings, or even operating their own businesses for 4 days every month?!
Transition Mode
By Jaclyn Berfond, KF8 Kenya
As one of the last of the KF8 class to arrive in the field – Nairobi, Kenya to be exact – these last two weeks have certainly been a time of transition for me. So you can imagine my surprise, and comfort, when I found that both the MFIs I will be working with – the Small and Micro-Enterprise Programme (SMEP) and Faulu Kenya – were going through their own transitions…
Before I jump into that, however, let me first introduce myself as a newcomer to the Kiva Fellows blog. My name is Jaclyn, and I come from New York, via Geneva, Switzerland. I have been passionate about microfinance for many years, and I am now very excited to have the opportunity to work with not one, but two microfinance institutions here in Kenya!
In the two weeks since I arrived, I have had all sorts of new experiences; eating nyama choma (roast meat) and ugali (a maize-based dish), taking my first matatu (informal taxi vans which are known for loud music and squeezing in as many people as possible), and driving over some of the roughest roads I have ever experienced to visit borrowers in rural towns, Nairobi slums and everything in between. But beyond this very personal (and exciting) transition to a new country, a new culture, I have also been able to learn a little bit about the transition of microfinance going on here in Kenya.
Bound Together, Not Tied Down
By Joel Carlman, KF8 – Kisumu Medical & Education Trust – Kisumu, Kenya
Over the years, there have been many entries on this site (and on many others) about the popular topic of group lending. The fact that borrowers gather once a week, or once a month to deal with any issues they might have or to keep each other accountable is incredible. That group lending has tended to lead to higher repayment rates is a fun little factoid that practitioners of microfinance love to point out. But, that only represents the utility of group lending. Yes, it works, but it’s also beautiful in practice.
Recently, I had the chance to travel a few hours south of Kisumu to two borrower groups. One is located in the rural community of Bware, and the other in the more urban-feeling town of Rongo. Both groups taught me a lot about what group lending is all about, and why, besides serving a utilitarian function, it can also be beautiful.
The One Thing
By Alison Carlman, KF8 – Kenya
As a graduate student of International Development at an African university, I wish that the answer was as simple as finding the “one thing” to alleviate poverty. For marketing purposes, NGOs and “experts” tell us that the answer is so simple, whether it’s access to clean water, economic liberalization, universal healthcare, education, modernization, or microfinance. But 50 years of “Development” in practice teaches us that it’s not so black and white.
Kiva will be the first to tell you: microfinance is not the solution to poverty. Provision of financial services is simply an important part of helping people improve their lives; microfinance is only a “tool” that can help people to meet a portion of their basic physical, social, psychological, and spiritual needs.
Alison at K-MET with Deborah, the Coordinator of the Food Security Program.
I’m working with Kisumu Medical & Education Trust (K-MET), a reproductive health organization in Kenya. One of the many services that K-MET provides is reproductive health education and life-skills training to at-risk young girls ages 10-24. These girls are often young mothers, survivors of rape and unsafe abortion, children of polygamous families, girls who had to drop out of school and work as prostitutes in order to meet theirs and their families’ basic needs.
A loan alone won’t solve these girls’ problems; they need counseling, support, marketable skills, food, daycare, education, encouragement, mentorship…. the list goes on.
(more…)
Pissed Off Kiva Lenders
By John Briggs, KF8 Kenya
Update on sentiment shift: On June 23, Tom, the team captain for the (formerly) Pissed Off Kiva Lenders, changed the team name to Unhappy Kiva Lenders. Tom explained the name change in a posting on the team page: “I want the day to come soon when the team name will be ‘Delighted Again Kiva Lenders’ but the step above in the name change reflects current progress.”
Some Kiva lenders are pissed off about Kiva’s recent launch of loans to borrowers in the United States. Their angry cry has been heard in Kenya.
I arrived in Kenya two weeks ago to work with new Kiva field partner KADET. My marathon orientation-and-training tour is in full swing: this week I met dozens of KADET branch personnel in the western cities of Kisumu and Eldoret.
Successfully setting up Kiva-related operations poses many challenges for MFIs, but my new KADET colleagues made quick work of it. Both branches were able to post borrowers to Kiva on the same day they were introduced to it: Kisumu posted Maulyne’s loan and Eldoret posted Monicah’s loan.
Both loans were funded overnight, and the KADET staff was jubilant. At the Eldoret branch I joined KADET staff in poring over the Kiva lenders and lending teams who had supported Monicah. One lending team for Monicah’s loan jumped out at us: the Pissed Off Kiva Lenders.
Pissed off lenders? People at KADET were surprised. This wasn’t in the Kiva orientation I’d given them. Stephen Makanga, KADET’s integration and donor relations manager, and I decided to open the Pissed Off Kiva Lenders team page to find out more.
Image from the Pissed Off Kiva Lenders' team page
A statement on the page announced, “Kiva’s stated mission is to ‘alleviate poverty’. Poverty is defined as: ‘the state of having little or no money and few or no material possessions’. Does that sound more like the situation for US Kiva borrowers or borrowers from the Third World countries?”
Stephen gave the page an incredulous stare and kept reading.
Better Together
Joel Carlman – Kisumu, Kenya – KF8
Hello from Kisumu, Kenya! After 36 hours of flying and several very sound nights of sleep, I’m writing you from the offices of Kisumu Medical and Education Trust (K-MET), our Kiva field partner! I say our because I have the privilege of working alongside my wife, Alison Carlman throughout our Kiva Fellowship. What an experience!
After arriving at the tiny Kisumu airport on Monday evening, we were able to settle into our temporary housing on the K-MET “complex.” We were in a bit of a daze from the sleepless flights and harrowing airport encounters trying to convince airport personnel in every country that we traveled through that they should exempt us from the charges levied on overweight baggage. Since when is 30kg a person overweight!?
Moving on.
The Kenyan experience thus far has been wonderful. From Ekesa, the administrative manager who picked us up from the airport, to the administrative staff, to John Asuke, the director of the revolving loan fund, to the staff at the field offices—everyone we have encountered at K-MET—and in Kenya in general—has warmed our hearts to an unexpected extent. We are so excited to be able to work with this group of exceptional people! (more…)
Two’s company, Kiva’s a crowd
Kiva is a crowdsourcer.
Crowds of lenders are the source of funds for Kiva borrowers. A very recent milestone quietly appeared on the Kiva statistics page — over half a million lenders have funded borrower loans on the Kiva website. That’s one big crowd!
There’s also a crowd of volunteers and avid Kiva boosters: hundreds of volunteer editors and translators, dozens of Kiva Fellows in the field, umpteen heroic souls who volunteer at Kiva headquarters in San Francisco, and the nearly five-thousand-strong group of Kiva Friends, the best compadres ever.
It’s good company to keep. Much of our interaction is in, and uniquely facilitated by, the electronic ether (the Internets, a series of tubes). Face-to-face meetings may never occur, but can be a cause for celebration when they do.
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 29 May 2009 at 06:36 Brett Dobbs 3 comments
I am living in Kisumu, Kenya
I am living in Kisumu, Kenya. Here is a picture of the street where I volunteer, in the Nyalenda slum.
Walking around the slum, one quickly comes across evidence of the post election violence. Burned buildings are common. As are random herds of goats.
White people in Kisumu are usually in self-contained SUVs. Not too many ever enter the Nyalenda slum. As a result, as I walk, I am usually chased by children.
If I stay in one place for too long, they gather to stare.
In the slum, you find many teenage girls. Their stories show a lot of common themes.
I am 20 years old. My parents passed away when I was 14. A lack of school fees made me leave school. We were left 10 children. Everyone searched for places to stay but I was left alone and went to be a street girl. A guy hired me as a maid but forced me to have sex. Within one month he raped me and I was pregnant. I went to the Kenyan police and they did not take any action about that case. They wanted money but I didn’t have even a single cent to give them. I became a mother of a child but there was no job or anything to do. I wake up early in the morning to wash clothes for people. They only give me 50 shillings (*equivalent of less than $1USD) in order to get food to eat with my child. Without washing clothes, we go to sleep hungry. If I can get someone to take care of me and return me back to school, then I can be proud and be happy as some people are. Maybe my life can change and I can be someone different.
I’m a girl of age 20 years. I dropped out of school in 2005 because I did not have money to continue my education. I have been staying at home doing nothing. I have no money to start a business. I have no knowledge of anything. I tried to convince my father to look for money to take me to high school but he did not. I have been walking day and night to look for employment even as a housemaid but the salary is as low as 100 shillings a month (*$1.31 USD per month). There is a time I succeeded in getting employment in a rich man’s house. He promised to pay me well but was exploiting me sexually. When I threatened to report him he sent me away. I was frustrated beyond words.
I am 22 years old. I am the first born in a family of five. I live with my mother and step-father and dropped out of school. I used to go clubbing and really had a bad company. I got pregnant and now I have a kid, he’s 2.5 years old. Life has been so hard I even tried marriage to find happiness and comfort. I was married to a young man who gave me everything but mistreated me and my kid. I had no choice but to stay with him since he provided me everything. Nobody cared about me. My husband was cheating on me but there was nothing I could do. Now I am HIV positive.
A Sisterhood for Change participant posing with her child
Kisumu Medical and Education Trust (“KMET”) is one of KIVA’s partners. In 2006, KMET created a program to address the seemingly hopeless situation for teenage girls. KMET recruited orphans, single mothers, high school drop-outs, HIV/AIDs patients and commercial sex workers for a program called Sisterhood for Change. The stories above are taken from profiles written by the girls recruited by the program.
Susan teaches tailoring skills to an SFC girl
When Sisterhood for Change began, KMET expected that upon graduation, the girls would immediately get jobs in local communities. Unfortunately, Kisumu just… doesn’t have jobs. So even with their new vocational skills, the girls were still unemployed and relying upon men for income.
So KMET conceptualized an idea for Safe Spaces. KMET has purchased a building in the Nyalenda slum and stocked it with the equipment needed to run tailoring, hairdressing and catering businesses. KMET will train the girls in business and entrepreneurship, and then they will be free to work in the Safe Space for as long as they wish. The girls will be purchasing supplies using KIVA loans.
For a long time, I wondered whether it could work. We held a lot of preliminary meetings to discuss our plans for the Safe Spaces, and the girls usually yawned in indifference. I would smile. I would pump my fists in excitement. I would lure them with cookies. Still, they seemed disinterested.
But now it’s actually happening! They are working in the Safe Spaces, selling french fries, avocado juice, and sassy hairstyles. Training takes place from April 29th-May 7th, with the generous help fof the Child at Venture Foundation. I still sometimes wonder if they are ready. I still sometimes wonder if Muhammad Yunus would approve. These girls really are the poorest of the poor, and we are trained that microfinance is not always effective with that group. Will high school drop outs be able to run their own businesses? We’ll find out…
Would Muhammad Yunus lend to us?
Milena Arciszewski is a year-long Kiva Fellow. She has been in Kenya since January 2009, helping to develop the Safe Space initiative. She loves getting emails, and can be reached at milena.kathryn@gmail.com.
Healthy Loans
Neat pajamas. That was one of two things I got out of having Amoebic Dysentery last week. The other, was a new appreciation for the work that K-MET, the development corporation with a small micro-finance wing, is doing.
Bad Food. Neat Pajamas.
I had been in Kisumu, Kenya for nearly three weeks and was really starting to hit my stride when the stomach rumble that is all too familiar to my fellow fellows rudely interrupted me. I’ll leave out the nasty parts but within 5-hours I went from bold Kiva Fellow to helpless, dehydrated man-baby. I called Milena Arciszewski (KF6, saint) and she helped me to the hospital where I managed to not cry myself to sleep and the doctors decided to check me in.
After a few IVs full of industrial strength Chinese anti-biotics and 80 gagillion trips to the bathroom, I was beginning to feel a little better and ventured out to the hospital’s balcony. Looking and acting like an extra from the latest Wes Anderson flick (cool pajamas, bandages, self-pity), I watched the sun set over a nearby slum.
It was at this moment the disparity in Kenya’s health-care system hit me. The treatment I received at Aga Khan Hospital was some of the best I have received in the world, but it was unfortunately due to the fact that most of the doctors and nurses had few other patients to tend to. The bulk of Kisumu’s population, including those suffering from the same parasite I had, cannot afford to check in or even visit a properly functioning hospital.
As I looked out at the slum, I thought of the other people who drank the same water or ate the same bad meat who were battling the same issue. What was going to become a battle/travel story for me was going to quite possibly kill someone within a kilometer of the hospital.
So where do micro-loans come in? I coincidentally am in a position to know. K-MET, where I have been placed for my Kiva fellowship, is not a traditional MFI. Rather, it is a development corporation focused on improving the health standards in Western Kenya. What is unique, is that K-MET uses the bulk of its micro-finance program as an incentive for Community Based Health Workers to dedicate more time to their work. Why the incentive? Because there are really incredible (mostly) women who work and live in the slums here in Kisumu (as well as outlying rural areas) who, on top of raising and supporting their families, running their business and managing some of the more difficult aspects of living in an underdeveloped town, VOLUNTEER to do community based health work. This often means taking on extra costs like delivering meds to patients to sick to get to the hospital or transporting health workers to patients homes. Often, these women are the lifeline for chronically sick and weak patients. Micro-loans often feel like the least that can be done for these women.
Really Neat Women
The program is also great because these women are trained to educate their families, friends, neighbors and communities about nutrition, hygiene, safe-sex and birth control while others are actual nurses who provide limited medical care. What makes the whole thing more remarkable to me, is that many of these women live on barely a dollar a day, a fair amount are widows and they live in conditions that are extremely difficult.
The services provided by these community based health workers pales in comparison to the treatment I received at the hospital, but without them, there would be nothing for their patients. I knew before I arrived that the work these women did was important, but until I went through the desperation that comes with debilitation, I’m not sure I fully understood how important it is to support these women in their work. It has given me, and I hope in turn, Kiva Lenders to K-MET, a new sense of purpose.
To lend to K-MET, check out the K-MET Team set up today!
