Posts filed under 'Peru'
Unsung Heroes
By Shereef Zaki, KF9, Perú
‘Connecting people through lending,’ precedes ‘alleviating poverty,’ in Kiva’s mission statement. I have come to believe that the goal might actually be of a higher as opposed to a simple aesthetic preference. I mean, maybe we could eradicate poverty individually, but with the concerted effort of a community it can be done more effectively. In a community one can share ideas, efforts, problems, solutions and risks.
And last week that is exactly what Kiva’s partner institutions in Latin America did. For the second year in a row, nearly all the MFIs who work with us in South America sent a representative to our Cumbre (summit, or in this context conference). For a full day we talked about new site features, challenges to the microfinance industry, new organizational efforts and new collective ideas.
Kiva connects people - on many levels
2 comments 9 October 2009
No Time For Romance
By Suzy Marinkovich, KF9
“Gender-based violence … is ubiquitous in much of the developing world, inflicting far more casualties than any war. Surveys suggest that about one third of all women world-wide face beatings in the home. Women aged fifteen through forty-four are more likely to be maimed or die from male violence than from cancer, malaria, traffic accidents, and war combined. A major study by the World Health Organization has found that in most countries, between 30 and 60 percent of women experience physical or sexual violence by a husband or boyfriend.” – Nicholas Kristof
When my husband and I were making our way overland to Bolivia, we took a ferry across a small part of Lake Titicaca. On the other side, we stood around some market stalls waiting for our bus to come off the ferry, and all of a sudden we heard yelling behind us escalate to screaming. We spun around to see two female market vendors arguing about one encroaching on the other’s selling space. The words quickly turned to blows, and in a matter of seconds the women were in the dirt, punching each other and ripping each other’s hair out. People just stood around, even smiling as if being entertained. Before long, I screamed for someone to break them up. A foreign traveler next to me whispered in English one of those sentences that rings in your ears for a long time because, at the time, you are so stunned you can’t think of a genius rebuttal fast enough. He said, “let them fight, that’s just how it is down here.” (more…)
7 comments 7 October 2009
A Shaky but Warm Welcome to Ica, Peru!
By Josh Wilcox, KF9 Peru
Three flights, one bus, and two taxi rides behind me, I arrived safely in the southern Peruvian city of Ica. Surrounded by a desert and thousands of miles from Monday Night Football with too much luggage and guitar in hand, I was a bit shocked when I found out the hotel I was hoping to temporarily stay at had collapsed in the formidable Peru earthquake in 2007. Thanks a lot Lonely Planet!
Fortunately I just asked a taxi driver to take me to an affordable hotel he would recommend. After chatting it up a bit with him in the car and telling him I was going to be working with the microfinance institution Caja Rural here in Ica, he snatched a piece of mail out of his glove box that read “Caja Rural” on the letterhead. He proceeded to tell me he is a current borrower from Caja Rural and is hoping to purchase a second taxi with his third loan. He then pulled out a picture of a 1936 Opel that he hopes to use as his second taxi. I have been a volunteer Kiva translator since February and have seen numerous stories such as his, but I was pleasantly caught off guard to finally hear an amazing story of a Kiva borrower first hand in such an unexpected setting!
Before I forget to introduce myself, my name is Josh Wilcox and I am part of the most recent Kiva Fellows class (KF9) to hit the field across the globe. I will be helping set up a recently approved new partner in Ica, Peru, officially named Caja Rural Señor de Luren. They have yet to start Day 1 of their pilot stage so I am in the fortunate position to experience the beginning stages of the Kiva process.
Below is the first chapter of a video diary I hope to maintain throughout the duration of my fellowship. Enjoy!
Loans to Caja Rural will be available soon, but in the meantime check out our other loans from South America here.
13 comments 6 October 2009
Be the Change…Mahatma Gandhi
“Be the change you wish to see in the world” -Mahatma Gandhi
That’s why I wanted to be a Kiva Fellow. In honor of Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday today (Oct 2nd), I am glad to say that my Kiva Fellow colleagues and I are living the change we wish to see by helping people much less fortunate than us.
Kiva Fellows Training
My name is Sheethal Shobowale. I am a New Yorker and the daughter of Indian immigrants. Through my recently founded company, Leap Work, I help non-profits with online communications – development, social media, audience research and analytics online. In my free time, I facilitate discussions about financial literacy for youth and conduct credit counseling for adults as well as coordinate my local block association. I also love rock climbing and cooking.
I am excited to work as a Kiva Fellow with Asociación Arariwa in Cusco, Peru starting next week. I look forward to sharing stories of positive change with you! You can also follow @LethalSheethal on Twitter to get (more) real-time updates from Cusco.
Please consider lending to Asociación Arariwa borrowers on Kiva or join Kiva Lending Team Amigos/as de Asociación Arariwa in your future loans.
Thanks for supporting Kiva!
Sheethal
Sheethal Shobowale is currently serving as a Kiva Fellow with Asociación Arariwa in Cusco, Peru.
7 comments 2 October 2009
Introducing the Guinea Pig…
By Bryan Goldfinger, KF9 (Peru)
At the KF9 graduation ceremony, each newly appointed Fellow received a Thank You card signed by most of the Kiva staff. Many staff members included a simple message and their signature (keep in mind, each one had to write on 49 separate cards), several included a witty remark and one or two left longer messages possibly containing some parting advice for the field. Although I appreciated each message and signature equally, there was one that stuck out from the rest, not necessarily because of who wrote it, or because it was written in green ink and in all capital letters, or because it was near the top of the card directly in the center, but because it read simply, “GOOD LUCK, GUINEA PIG!!” (more…)
11 comments 29 September 2009
Women in Hats
By Suzy Marinkovich, KF9 Bolivia
We can’t get enough of them. We love them so much that they even have their own lending team of fans and a discussion on KivaFriends. Whether they are made of straw or soft fabric, bowler, flat-brimmed, or a tiny saucer looking thing on our borrower’s heads – we just love them.
There is an old English adage that says, “If you want to get ahead in life, you should get yourself a hat.”
I like hats, and I’ll wear one every now and again – maybe for Opening Day in Del Mar or during a long hike to beat the heat (and, of course, during San Diego Padres baseball games). But down here, it’s an essential part of your everyday cholita’s wardrobe – it’s her piece of flair, her fashion statement, and it’s also almost always a statement about where she comes from. Her hat may very well give away her hometown – and whether others see her as a Cochabambina or an Ayacuchana, for example.
When I saw our “Women in Hats” lending team, I was in love! I promise not to get all deep on you, but I thought it was such a cute, simple way that cultures across the world can come together through Kiva – by celebrating even the simplest of accessories. It also conveys why loaning on Kiva is so fun (and addictive) for us!
So, I decided to do a little light research into this hat phenomenon. Since I arrived in Bolivia from Peru, the hat styles have definitely changed. These ones are usually small bowler hats and I cannot for the life of me figure out how they seem to defy physics by not flying off their owner’s heads. Sometimes they are tilted off to the side, sometimes they add a solid 10 inches to a woman’s height – which I guess lends itself to the aforementioned English adage.
I began by Googling “bowler hats Bolivia” and soon found out that they’re called a “bombin” down here. When I Googled that however, all I got were a bunch of articles on bombings (since Google was certain I made a typo) and some Wu Tang Clan lyrics about “bombin’ buildings.” I take it that bombin hats aren’t a typical Google search. Regardless, I dug a little deeper and here’s a synopsis of what I found:
The bowler hat – or bombin – has been worn by Quechua and Aymara women in Peru and Bolivia since the 1920s, when it was introduced to Bolivia by British railway workers. Rumor has it that the hats were found to be too small for their intended recipients, so they were then distributed to the locals. For many years a factory in Italy manufactured the hats for the Bolivian market. Now, however, they are produced internationally. This seems to be the most popular theory of bombin origination. (Main source: Wikipedia.org)
Another rumored and uncorroborated bombin hat theory involves an over-order of bowler hats by an enterprising salesman, who supposedly convinced the Bolivian locals that the wearing of hats would increase their fertility. Whether that was once the belief or not, you may be relieved to know that this rumor certainly isn’t prevalent today.
7 comments 22 September 2009
To Have Illusions
By Shereef Zaki, KF9, Perú
What do you want to be when you grow up? What are your hopes? What are your dreams?
Throughout my childhood, these questions constantly attached themselves to the most prosaic daily interactions. In a sense I, and most of my peers, were conditioned to be ambitious dreamers, convinced of the limitless possibilities our futures held (and still hold).
When speaking with borrowers one of our unstated goals as Kiva Fellows is to uncover their latent sense of possibility and excitement at the prospect of success. During interviews I attempt to understand what aspiring entrepreneurs want for themselves and for their children. But one of the harshest realities that I confront concerns the occasional and precise absence of aspiration.
In no way am I implying laziness or even a lack of imagination; rather, survival tends to distract many Kiva clients from the potential realities that accompany success. And then I had an a-ha moment. While interviewing Yesenia Esmeralda Bances Morales (click to contribute to her loan), who seemed bemused when she heard the question ‘what are your hopes or dreams in life’ it dawned on me that it might have been the first time anyone had ever asked her that question.
Yesenia Selling at the Market
2 comments 17 September 2009
Just want to be starting something
By Suzy Marinkovich, KF8
I remember when I was a teenager, I’d awaken in the middle of the night and meander to the kitchen for a glass of water and my dad would be perched there in his chair with a yellow notepad, writing madly about some scientific revelation. He was always so quiet, and his presence would catch me by surprise. The way his hair was completely messed up and his eyes scarily determined, I could swear in these moments he was a mad scientist. He was coming up with a new theory, some new protein to test for in his lab. I always felt that surely, by the aura of madness accompanying him, he was writing down information that would lead to finding a cure for something that I was incapable of understanding due to his annoying inability to use layman’s terms in explanations.
Writing this post was the first time I felt a little of my Dad’s madness, because I wrote this post quickly with just a pen and notebook in hand and a bad case of writer’s cramp. As I wrote it, one of the loan officers asked to borrow my pen four times before I noticed she was speaking to me. I am sure I looked insane to her. I just feel very occupied by this issue, as I am sure a lot of the other Fellows, Kiva staff, lenders, and borrowers themselves feel.
When your heart is invested in someone, it feels instinctive to look for dangers in their path to warn them. I do the same thing for microfinance; I am always pining around our borrower’s stories to unearth obstacles to its success. I’ve come to believe microfinance’s first and most formidable threat is living without ever having had instruction in economics.
By removing certain variables we can make sense of at least a part of this problem.
When small loans don’t work, let’s assume that means one of two things:
A) It didn’t help the borrower financially and they are about the same.
B) It financially hurt the borrower.
Let’s go ahead and remove all extraneous factors – e.g. political strife, health, personal problems, weather, etc. I am aware that presently, it’s virtually impossible to bar these factors in the developing world as we know it. However, for all intents and purposes, let’s work with variables we might be able to control.
As I write this blog post in my notebook, I am seated in the back of a sea of white plastic chairs that hold the many socias (borrowers) at FINCA. We are all watching a Power Point presentation on the subject: “How to know if you are winning or losing in small business.”
FINCA organized this talk because of the following statistic:
The average life span of small businesses in Ayacucho is 18 months.
FINCA Peru lecture on fostering successful business
5 comments 10 September 2009
Necessity Entrepreneurship
By Shereef Zaki, KF9, Perú
On August 22nd the New York Times published the article On to Plan B: Starting a Business describing the unexpected spike of new entrepreneurs emerging from the wreckage of the crisis. They quote the Kauffman foundation and bring the term ‘necessity entrepreneurship’ into the mainstream. And in so doing they articulate one of the misperceptions that surrounds the incentives behind starting a business.
Sometimes I really get the feeling that the talking heads, professors, text-books and pols just don’t get it. And by ‘it’ I mean anything remotely human. To think that greed gets elevated as some sort of miraculously innovative force in the ‘opportunity entrepreneurship’ model, where interest rates adjustments can fix anything, still boggles my mind. As far as I am concerned, nearly all entrepreneurship is ‘necessity entrepreneurship,’ whether in the US, Egypt, Armenia or in Chiclayo, Peru.
Walking to Angelita's Shack
The will to live and make a better life for one’s children are the driving economic forces in most places. People’s businesses are too small to fail — their families depend on them. The phrase ‘necessity is the mother of invention’ contains a truth lost on contemporary economic thought. Luckily it is not lost on Kiva Lenders, whose generosity grows when ‘opportunities’ dry up.
In the end, I cannot help but laugh out of frustration when I read statements like this: “But research on what is known as post-traumatic growth has found that some people become more resilient when faced with adversity, says Shawn Achor, a Harvard researcher. Creativity surges, he says, as they adapt to a new situation.” I read this during the evening, while during the same day I had been out to visit Angelita Loconi De Teque who is 47 and perseveres through ‘adversity’ to make a better life for the 4 children still in her care.
3 comments 9 September 2009
Recession-proof
By Shereef Zaki, KF9, Perú
As my first week working with EDPYME Alternativa, one of Kiva’s newest partners, draws to a close I can think of only one phrase to describe the world of micro-finance: recession-proof. Having just come out of the economic and political turmoil caused by the so-called, “Great Recession,” in the US, the vitality and celerity of micro-businesses is cast into even greater relief.
I want to begin by introducing you, the Kiva community, to EDPYME Alternativa. Born of an effort in the Peruvian Chamber of Commerce, EDPYME Alternativa is a highly effective and organized MFI whose mission is to improve the living condition of its clients by supporting their entrepreneurial activities, generating employment in the small and micro enterprise sectors, and strengthening the financing for sustainable and profitable businesses in the region.
In addition to issuing financial products like loans EDPYME Alternativa also provides the following services for its clients: bi-yearly medical checkups, agricultural capacitation workshops, technology training workshops, and sales workshops.
And to maintain their presence in the community EA also holds an annual “Chocolatá” where they give out chocolate and presents to the children of their least fortunate clients and clothing to the adults. Additionally, they collect clothing and supplies for clients who are the victims of natural disasters such as the cold snaps, heat waves and earthquakes common to this region.
In the Mercado Modelo, where many Kiva borrowers have setup stands, competition can be fierce but it stokes the fires of their ambition
In spite of having been here only a brief amount of time, EDPYME Alternativa has already demonstrated to me the the recession-resistant nature of microfinance. They lend regardless of crisis and focus on the well being of their clients. This is a world that lacks Best Buy, Wal Mart, Staples and Barnes and Noble. Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and the other institutions that line that gilded casino known as Wall Street have peripheral influence here. (more…)
3 comments 28 August 2009
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