Hydrologic has a simple mission: it builds, distributes and sells water filters to rural customers in Cambodia. Its water filters improve public health and reduce the environmental impact of clean water access.
About 3.9 million Cambodians lack access to clean water, so most rural families have to purchase bottled water from a market or boil water at home.1 Both options are time-consuming and environmentally harmful, but they are necessary to prevent disease. According to UNICEF: "diarrhoeal diseases alone account for one-fifth of...
Stories tagged with loans
I write to you from Dili, the still sleepy capital of Timor-Leste, Southeast Asia’s newest and least developed country. I’ve spent the last month with Kaebauk Investimentu no Finansas (KIF), a long time Kiva Field Partner and one of only two microfinance organizations in the country. Most of Timor still lack access to basic financial services and KIF fills a vital role in closing that margin. With 22 total branches, KIF has a footprint in every district, one of the few local organizations that cover the breadth of the country.
While Timor is small, it is very mountainous...
Everyone who becomes a Kiva borrower through iDE Ghana’s Sama Sama Toilet program wants to buy a toilet structure - the very first toilet to ever grace their home. Amazingly, 100% of these borrowers have gotten funded by Kiva lenders, a fantastic statistic!
But have you ever given any thought to how the structure gets there? It isn’t magic, someone has to build it. The behind-the-scenes success of Sama Sama Toilet is its Toilet Business Owner program, or TBO. As the new-on-the-ground Kiva Fellow, I got to visit three TBOs today. TBOs are recruited early on in...
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I'm excited to be writing to you as the Kiva fellow stationed in Sololá, Guatemala, where I’ve been working with our Field Partner, ADICLA. I wanted to share one of my favorite memories from my time with ADICLA and tell you a little more a little bit about my experience in Guatemala.
One of the highlights of my time with ADICLA was the opportunity to see the impact that they’re having on their borrowers. ADICLA is providing much-needed support to many indigenous people and others who live in rural, hard-to-reach areas in Guatemala. I had the...
Bacolod, also referred to as “Sugarland” by Joe Studwell in his book “How Asia Works”, is the sugar capital of the Philippines and my first destination as a Kiva fellow. Indeed, arriving in Bacolod was exactly how Studwell described it, one sugar cane field after another, but it was a salty business in that sweet world that caught my eye.
Meet Cecilia, a successful businesswoman who prepares and sells salted dried fish. She started her business buying fresh fish in credit and worked really hard to prepare it and sell part of it within three days in...
Continue Reading >>How did I never know that water can have so many social and economic impacts on the stakeholders? I mean, not that I don't think water is important, but my experience with Impact Water, a social enterprise, broadened my view on the many ripple effects water can have.
Blessed with fertile soil and a favorable climate, northern Nigeria is considered the “breadbasket” of the country. However, low mechanization and sparse infrastructure isolate this region from the bustling economy of Lagos, which is just 1,000 km to the south. Insecurity in the northeast heightens the divide where, since 2009, over 20,000 lives have been lost and over 2 million...
Medellín, Colombia – a bustling city of 2.5 million inhabitants is located in central Colombia at an altitude of just under 5,000 feet, running north to south with mountains abutting it on all sides. Although many westerners may continue to associate Medellín with the country’s history of drug-related violence, residents of the region know the city for its vibrant culture and favorable climate. In fact, Medellín is known colloquially as “la Ciudad de la...
Ah, it's that time of year again! Growing up in upstate New York in the United States, some of my late summer memories include the New York State Fair—particularly the concerts, popcorn, funnel cake and fair games-- I can almost smell it from here. However this year, as a Kiva fellow placed in Sololá, Guatemala, I was lucky enough to experience a different type of fair--the Feria de Sololá, or the Sololá Fair.
This feria is...
I left the Advans Ghana's (Kiva's Field Partner) office, with Kofi, the Advans Loan Officer, to meet the nearest potential Kiva borrower, Elizabeth.
For the first leg of our journey, we had to take three different tro-tros, minibus share taxis, and we eventually ended up at a busy intersection with market stalls all around. Now the exciting and unexpected part of the trip began – getting on a motorcycle for the last 6 kilometers to Elizabeth's village.