Posts filed under ‘CIDRE’
Loans Available Here –>
By Mariela Cedeño, KF16, Bolivia.
Every time I walk into one of CIDRE’s offices in Bolivia, I always stop and take a look at their street sign. I’m not sure why, it’s a weird habit that reminds me of where I am, who I am working with, and the amazing opportunity that has been afforded to me as a Kiva Fellow. This past week, however, when walking into one of CIDRE’s branch offices I thought to myself, “I see this sign and I know that it means ‘loans available here’, but how do entrepreneurs know that they can get access to tool at CIDRE that could help change their lives?” Microfinace, after all, has as much to do with access to credit as it has to with anything, so I started asking around….how do people find out about CIDRE?
CIDRE's Office in Colomi
Word of Mouth
In talking to one of the veteran loan officers, her first response and a response that has been echoed many times since was simply: word of mouth. For decades now, some of CIDRE’s loan officers have been working in specific neighborhoods, learning about various communities’ productive activities, and offering a way to help those businesses thrive. More than that, they have become trusted community members by getting to know their clients and their families, listening to their hardships, and celebrating in their triumphs. So once one community member becomes a CIDRE client, it is highly likely that they will spread the word….in comes Francisca.
Francisca With Her Cows
Francisca has been a CIDRE client for sometime, so when her community started thinking of a way to grow their dairy businesses, Francisca suggested CIDRE could help put their plans into action. A few weeks later, 15 had committed to the plan. Together, they each took out a loan to help purchase a refrigerated milk tank from which the group’s daily milk production could be picked up by Bolivia’s largest dairy company, Pil Andina. With this direct connection to Pil, they no longer have to piecemeal irregular sales together through family and neighbors but rather have a steady source of income.
But now you’re thinking, ok, but when those star clients aren’t around to get their neighbors to CIDRE, what happens? Well CIDRE goes to them.
Spreading the Gospel of CIDRE
In Colomi, the small branch office has 3 loan officers, 4,000 inhabitants, and a lot of productive territory to cover. In order to help grow CIDRE’s presence in the small town, loan officers from the central office and a nearby brach traveled to Colomi to spread the gospel of CIDRE. On Colomi’s Dia de Feria (main market day), 6 visiting loan officers set up a small booth in the midst of all the action and got to work.
Dia de Feria, Colomi
After setting up CIDRE’s “Loans Available Here” booth, ensuring that enticing cumbias were playing on the car stereo, and stapling copies of Colomi loan officer business cards to CIDRE flyers, we were ready to go.
The CIDRE Crew
One by one the loan officers approached market antendees and gave out flyers and cards.
Getting to Know CIDRE
Some were already familiar with credit and asked specific questions regarding interest rates and loans products.
Reviewing Loan Types, Terms, and Rates
Some looked very confused…
CIDRE, what?
In the end, the loan officers handed out a hundreds of flyers and gave a lot of credit talks. We don’t know how many will become CIDRE clients in the future, but we do know that some promised to at least stop by.
Mariela Cedeño is part of Kiva’s 16th Class of Fellows serving with CIDRE in Bolivia. Cows are her new favorite thing on earth. Please support CIDRE‘s hard-working entrepreneurs by making a loan today and join the Friends of CIDRE/Amigos de CIDRE lending team to stay involved!
Holy Cowllateral!
By Mariela Cedeño, KF16, Bolivia.
“Banking the unbankable“ has always been my favorite nomenclature attached to the microcredit movement that has gained such strong momentum in recent years. When feeling more long-winded, I like to describe microcredit as a useful poverty alleviation tool (a piece of the pie) by which those that have been traditionally left out of the formal banking sector can access capital to help grow their enterprises. Though it’s difficult to measure exactly how many people in the world are unbanked, my overzealous use of cellular technology has made one statistic stick with me: there are twice as many people in the world with cellphones as there are with access to financial services. But why? Well there are many, many reasons and I [un/fortunately] am not a seasoned economist, however, beckoning my finite knowledge I can say that one marginalizing factor that keeps the poor from access to credit is formal collateral – no collateral, no money. Here’s where CIDRE comes in….
CIDRE is one of Kiva’s Field Partners in Bolivia, and though day-to-day they largely look like a typical bank, they have atypical clients, and those atypical clients and CIDRE’s own roots as a research and rural development think tank are the driving engines behind CIDRE’s push to continue to look for ways to provide loans under alternative collateral models.
One of their pioneer alternative credit projects involved providing loans based on community ownership of forested land. In conjunction with the Department of Forestry, CIDRE developed a forested land appraisal system and began granting loans for agricultural production based on the value of the trees on the community owned land. Interestingly enough, this alternative collateral system also furthered the mission of CIDRE’s Habitat and Environment Division, as the loans came with training regarding the importance of protecting natural resources and lessening the use of agrochemicals. Furthermore, because the trees were being used as collateral and every tree, the value of that tree, and the years of life left for that tree were registered with the Forestry Department, it was imperative that the lenders that chose to cut their trees for profit engage in sustainable forestry to replace the value of the trees.
Though in its inception the alternative forestry collateral model worked well, it seems to have somewhat eroded over the years due to evolving loan use. The initial purpose of the forestry collateral loans was for agricultural production, however, as the program expanded lenders began using these loans for lumber ventures as well. Infighting began over how the communal land was divided for the sale of lumber, individual lenders were dissatisfied with trees located on their plot, equipment couldn’t access certain areas, and those with ‘skinny’ trees were not being paid enough to repay their loans and replant. CIDRE continues to work with these borrowers to alleviate the issues that have arisen in hopes of circling back to where things started.
Nevertheless, as CIDRE’s focus has always been on production, we have finally arrived at the type of collateral to which this post owes its name, my recent nearest and dearest friend, the cow.
CIDRE’s lenders are primarily located in the rural areas of Bolivia, as such the vast majority of CIDRE’s loans fund dairy and/or agriculture businesses. In order to ensure that these lenders can access the kind of capital necessary to start or grow their businesses, CIDRE has created an internal policy by which cows become the collateral guarantee. Each cow owned by the lender is assigned a value (according to their breed, size, state, and milk production) and 80% of the cow’s value is then given as a collateral guarantee against which lenders can draw loans. The loans are almost always used to reinvest in their dairy business: to purchase more cattle (most often when a cow is pregnant, nursing, or has fallen to mastitis), for feed, to invest in ‘stock’ for their communal dairy cooperatives, milking machines, to rent land for the cows to pasture, or to buy refrigerated milk holding tanks. By all accounts these cows are in fact the most precious thing that a dairy farmer owns as they are a single source of income, sustenance, and now collateral, so it seems fitting that CIDRE has so readily acknowledged the value of their most popular clients’ trade.
As I sit around the office or head out to make field visits it seems strange that the cowllateral guarantee has become such commonplace in this organization’s day-to-day work, in fact, it’s become a regular part of my own microfinance vernacular. Just as impressive, is the wealth of ‘cow-knowledge’ that the loan officers acquire throughout their tenure with CIDRE — equipped to answer questions and analyze information regarding cows, the dairy business, and the way that community groups operate. To not hog all the cow-knowledge, here are some gems that I’ve acquired in my time with CIDRE:
- Dutch, Jersey, Holstein, and recently Creole cows populate Cochabamba’s dairy farms.
- Cows eat all the time, literally all day. Their feed consists of a balanced mix of Chacla (chopped up corn plants) , minerals, oats, pasture, alfalfa, and soya bean shells. A truck load of feed which will last 6-8 months can run up to $8,000 U.S.
- Due to pachamama (mother eart)h, her pastures, and the way that cows are raised, Cochabamba produces the best quality milk of any department in the country. This could be biased information, but I have tried the milk and cheese that comes from these bovines, and it’s pretty spectacular.
- Last, but not least, this is what a cow milking professional looks like:
Mariela Cedeño is part of Kiva Fellows 16th Class, serving with CIDRE in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Cows have become her new favorite thing on earth. Please support CIDRE‘s hard-working entrepreneurs by making a loan today and join the Friends of CIDRE/Amigos de CIDRE lending team to stay involved!
Update from the Field: Videos, Epic Commutes + Going Beyond Microfinance
Compiled by Alexis Ditkowsky, KF14, South Africa
Another week, another incredible range of dispatches from around the world. Several Fellows told their stories with video and pictures while others took time to reflect on the state of microfinance as a global industry and in their respective countries. And what would a week in the field be without getting to know a few borrowers? Plus, scroll to the end of the post for pictures you may have missed the first time around.
Continue Reading 28 February 2011 at 00:38 Alexis Ditkowsky 10 comments
Participating in the Dialogue: The Role of Microfinance Critics (Part 2)
Julie Shea, KF13, Bolivia
A few months ago, I wrote a blog post that drew on my experiences as a Kiva Fellow in Bolivia to discuss two points of criticism about microfinance, specifically from Aaron Ausland’s Huffington Post article, “How Microfinance Lost its Soul”. In this second installment, I will attempt to do the same, focusing on the portrayal of microfinance put forth by Tom Heinemann’s controversial documentary, The Micro Debt.
Continue Reading 24 February 2011 at 09:00 julieshea 4 comments
Borrower Visits: Inspirational Stories and Important Lessons
By Julie Shea, KF13, Bolivia
Kiva strives to connect microfinance borrowers and lenders from all corners of the globe – and one medium through which it is able to accomplish this is the Kiva Fellows blog. I would therefore like to dedicate this post to telling the story of Javier Aguilar Soto, what I learned from meeting with him, and some broader lessons I gained, through the meeting, about the field of microfinance.
Continue Reading 25 January 2011 at 21:00 julieshea Leave a comment
Climate Change hits Kiva Borrowers in Bolivia
By Suzy Price Marinkovich, KF9 Bolivia
“In a world that is hot—a world that is more and more affected by global warming—guess who is going to suffer the most? It will be the people who caused it the least—the poorest people in the world, who have no electricity, no cars, no power plants, and virtually no factories to emit CO2 into the atmosphere. Many of the 2.4 billion people who live on $2 a day or less reside in rural areas and depend directly on the soil, forests, and plants in their immediate vicinity for subsistence.” –Thomas Friedman, “Hot, Flat, & Crowded” (Pg. 158)
What I have learned the most since I arrived in South America as a Kiva Fellow seven months ago is that, not only is climate change real – it is making the poor poorer faster than we can create infrastructure to accommodate it. Bolivia has been devastated by heightened temperatures melting glaciers around La Paz, for example, which have in turn dried up rivers that irrigated entire mountainous communities who are now going from poor to extremely poor—and dangerously fast. In Cochabamba, the drying up of rivers can not only be felt but it can be seen nearly everywhere, in old riverbeds now littered with trucks filling up with gravel. Even worse, these trucks are loading up gravel in the middle of “la epoca de lluvia,” or the rainy season, which now feels very much a misnomer for Cochabambinos.
Kiva’s newest partner in Bolivia, CIDRE, is by far most proud of its potable water and irrigation projects – and once you hear what they are up to, you will understand why.
CIDRE approaches agricultural communities with recently dried-up river beds or nonexistent irrigation systems and arranges a community-style loan at very low interest. I say “community” and not “group” loan because the loan is taken out for one purpose, to build a well, and then is repaid by each household as part of the larger sum. I had the opportunity to attend the 6-year anniversary party of a CIDRE-funded community well in the rural area and was astonished at the overwhelming pride the community had for the well. CIDRE’s veteran loan officer Juan and I were treated like the guests of honor; we were even asked to bless the well, give speeches, and shake hands with every single member of the community. It was extraordinarily humbling. I particularly loved Juan’s speech, as he introduced me by explaining Kiva to the community, and telling them how it will help CIDRE bring more wells to dry Cochabamba farming communities. Seeing the joy in their faces at the potential impact this could have for their neighbors was my absolute proudest moment as a Kiva Fellow and it brought tears to my eyes.
Rigoberto, the president of the community’s agricultural cooperative, took me on a tour to tell me why exactly they were so proud about this well. (more…)
Cocaine and Microfinance
By Suzy Marinkovich, KF9
“Coca is green, not white like cocaine.” – Evo Morales
The Chapare, the Yungas, the DEA, USAID, cocaine, drug trafficking, alternative crops, forced eradication, Evo Morales.
These are the buzz words constantly attached to Bolivian articles on the both domestic and foreign-aided drug war against cocaine production. While tough to get the facts on cocaine production by country, suffice it to say Bolivia is one of the world’s biggest cocaine producers along with the likes of Peru and Colombia. To put it in perspective, Bolivian police discovered one cocaine lab this year that, by itself, was capable of producing 220 pounds of cocaine a day. In the US, the street value of that amount equals approximately five million dollars.
The welcome sign in Villa Tunari, Chapare, which translates to read: "Land Free of USAID."
When I arrived at my first Kiva placement in Ayacucho, Peru, the region where the vast majority of Peruvian cocaine is produced, I learned about the ancient cultural ties between the Andean people and the coca leaf. It’s a part of everyday Andean life and the leaf itself is considered sacred; it is most often chewed and used in tea. There is something so strange about juxtaposing the image of an elderly Ayacuchan beggar chewing coca leaves against the image of a rich 20-something snorting lines of cocaine inside a VIP section in a Los Angeles club. I realize that sentence is very blunt, but it helps to highlight the reality that coca and cocaine are definitively worlds apart despite being of the same root. (more…)
Why Me?: A Post about Bolivian Women
By Suzy Marinkovich, KF8 Peru & KF9 Bolivia
Twisted twining vining metal unrhythmic untamed unkempt and in comes the dust sweat and sticking to me tires thumping each rock unsettled plastic bag squeezed empty tossed out the window just a drop of papaya juice leaps back clings to the dirty car door parting from the white stretch of plastic mangling on wire scraps whose posture, never organized (more…)
Why We Should Debate Loan Expiration
By Suzy Marinkovich, KF 8/9
As you may have seen, over the past couple of months Kiva has seen its first loans expire on the site. Currently, I am in my eighth week of working with a brand-new Kiva partner, CIDRE, an MFI specializing in agriculture and livestock loans in Bolivia. I mention this because I’ve noticed a significant portion of the loans that have expired or are close to expiration are from MFIs in Bolivia. I realize my opinion is skewed by having spent only a handful of days at Kiva headquarters followed by 5 months at two Kiva partners in South America. As a result, I don’t have really have a great vision from the top – I don’t understand all the organizational elements in place to keep Kiva sustainably rolling. I am just going to call it like I see it now, sun-drained from a long day spent on grueling rural roads, visiting incredibly inspiring Kiva borrowers and successful social projects CIDRE has had a hand in.
My understanding of the premise behind loan expiration is that it allows for Kiva to be more of a marketplace – where instead of making decisions on the end of Kiva, they are made on the end of the MFI and the funding choice is up to the lenders. Thus, the website itself is designed to be like an Ebay for microloans, an intermediary between funders and the funded.
Here is my reasoning for why I personally believe the expiration of loans on Kiva could be detrimental:
1(a). To make an analogy with the child-sponsorship model (please bear with me as it’s stretch): imagine a marketplace for sponsoring children’s school loans, with the exact same design as Kiva. At this hypothetical site, lenders like us could lend to cover school fees for children that would pay for middle or high school (in many countries, attending said schools requires paying school fees). Children’s photos and biographies are thus posted to this hypothetical site, and we treat it like a marketplace. Then, as the site expands and more loans are posted, certain kids aren’t being funded – their loans expire on this site. Then, you pull up the pages of all the children whose loans expired, and they are all kids who aren’t cute or aren’t fitting our notion of how a needy child should look. As you can see, this is unfairly discriminant.
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…)
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.
Cochabamgringa en el Hospital
By Suzy Marinkovich, KF9
My husband walked in to the CIDRE office this Tuesday around 5pm, smiling big but smelling awful. Everyone crowded around and asked, “Mateo! Como le ha ido?” – “How was your [first] day?” I could tell they were worried all day when they had asked me if I heard from him, but I knew he was fine. They may worry that this gringo from the States, who is still very much learning Spanish, can’t hang in ‘el campo’ (the farm). But Matt loves that kind of stuff.
My husband is a veterinary technician back home, and is currently applying to veterinary school. When he agreed to come join me on this 8-month adventure, both of us worried about what it would look like for him – as we had zero plans and no idea where I’d even be come second and third placement. But the experience has been as remarkable for him as it has for me. At CIDRE, the loan officers set him up with the very veterinarians who take care of the CIDRE borrowers’ precious bovine. I’ll discuss his dirty work with more detail in another blog post – but let me just give you a taste… his first day involved delivering a baby calf and neutering pigs. Just another day at the office, right?
Click the pic: it's a shameless plug for CIDRE's new lending team!
CIDRE is one of Kiva’s brand-new Latin American partners, and is extremely well-respected here in Bolivia. The founder, Alvaro, does a wonderful job operating the business and his plans for CIDRE’s growth are both tangible and exciting.
Hours after I arrived here in Cochabamba last week, I began mysteriously throwing up over and over again. In a delirious state and in the hands of my husband, I made it to the hospital – where I was promptly hooked up to fluids.
The Cows of Cochabamba
By Nick Cain, KF7 Paraguay
In Cochabamba, Bolivia, milk is quite literally the ticket to financial services and economic growth. Kiva lenders, meet CIDRE, your newest Field Partner in Bolivia. Last week I traveled from Asunción, Paraguay to Cochabamba, Bolivia to train CIDRE’s staff members on the Kiva platform, help them learn a little about the Kiva community, and make sure they had everything they needed in order to start connecting their borrowers to Kiva lenders.
- A panoramic view of Cochabamba
The staff was enthusiastic to get to work and learn more about Kiva, so Day One of my visit was all training sessions and PowerPoints. But on Day Two, CIDRE’s new Kiva Coordinator, Diego Cardona, and I set off for the outskirts of Cochabamba to meet some borrowers. Most of CIDRE’s loan products are geared to serve the region’s dairy farmers, a community of micro-entrepreneurs who own anywhere from 5 – 25 cows and earn income by selling milk to Pil, the region’s lone dairy corporation. Cochabamba’s dairy farmers are concentrated in a large swath of land behind the city’s airport. About 10 minutes after leaving CIDRE’s offices in the city center, paved roads gave way to a lumpy, dusty web of cinder-block houses and muddy cow pastures. Eventually Diego and I came to a stop, eye-to-eye with a couple of rather hefty bovines.
