By Julie Pachico, KF9 Mexico

A big part of the loan officers’ work load at FVP is “prospectando,” or heading out into the field and reaching out to potential clients. When I was first invited to come along I was a little nervous, as my career as a canvasser lasted for all of one day and I hate pushy sales people, no matter how good the cause. However my fears were rapidly relieved within minutes of accompanying the loan officers on their door-to-door visits. Their attitude isn’t that of aggressive marketing, but rather stems from a genuine concern and desire to help. Their message isn’t so much “invest in this program,” but more along the lines of “here’s this really great microcredit service offered by this organization, have you ever heard of it?” Here is a simple video I made of “prospectando” with the FVP loan officers in the Voluntad y Trabajo neighborhood , on the outskirts of Nuevo Laredo. You can read more about FVP’s method of finding new clients behind the cut.

Going door-to-door. This person actually already had an FVP loan to improve their house, which is looking pretty good!

Loan officer usually head out to “prospectar” two or three times a week and work for anywhere between three to six hours in different neighborhoods: handing out fliers, explaining FVP’s interest rates and repayment plans and setting up appointments with people interested in taking out a loan. I was very impressed by the professional yet personable way with which the loan officers publicize FVP’s microloan program. Loan officers always start off by asking how the family is dong and really express a genuine concern on the status of a person’s business. Many times when we met someone who worked as a foreman, the loan officers would tell him that they could help him get in touch with families who have a housing loan with FVP and needed a foreman for their construction project. It was really moving and inspiring to see this small yet important gesture, helping people find badly-needed work!

The loan officers aren’t the only ones out and about promoting FVP; there’s also Don Pedro. Don Pedro has already had two loans out on Kiva and his third one is set to appear very soon, so be sure to keep checking!! He works in the publicity business, which is to say that he drives one of those ubiquitous cars with the loudspeakers that blare a recorded message enthusiastically espousing how amazing their product is and yes, ladies and gentlemen, it would really be a huge mistake for you not to purchase it right away. (This type of publicity is very common in Nuevo Laredo; instead of needing an alarm here I’m usually woken up by a man selling vitamins driving by my apartment around 7 AM.) Don Pedro used his Kiva loans to purchase his sound system equipment as well as the vehicle he currently uses; he is definitely putting it to excellent use. It was really awesome to see FVP employing one of their own clients to help publicize their services; it really proves how they like to keep things in the “FVP family.” As another example of this, the voice you hear in the video praising FVP’s virtues is that of Don Pedro’s granddaughter, who also is also a Kiva borrower and works for a radio station. She’s only in her early 20’s and I hope you’ll agree with me, she has a very long and successful career in publicity and voiceover work ahead of her!

The map in FVP's office of Nuevo Laredo.

In almost every case I’ve seen during the “prospectando” trips, people are genuinely interested in learning about FVP (when they’re not it’s usually because they already have a loan!). The loan officers usually ask “Have you ever heard of FVP before?” and unless the person has a neighbor or family member that already has an FVP loan, the answer is almost always no. This lack of knowledge among the peripheral communities of Nuevo Laredo reinforces the need for the loan officers to be on the ground and spreading the word from door to door. If they weren’t doing this then I honestly have no idea how these families would learn about FVP’s microfinance program. Usually the people who haven’t heard of FVP (the folks who live in the outlying, underdeveloped neighborhoods) are the people who need a loan the most. These are the neighborhoods that didn’t exist ten years ago, the ones with the unpaved streets, where hardly anyone works in the formal economy, instead finding work as foremen (in the case of the men) or selling herbal remedies (as the women do). In these areas a loan can go a long way in helping a woman start another business from her house, so that she can still take care of her children but generate some extra income at the same time. But before you reach that point, you’ve got to get out and spread the word first, so that people can know that microfinance is a genuine option for them!

You can help SPREAD THE WORD about Kiva by inviting a friend and family member sign up today and make a loan! Don’t forget to check out FVP’s currently fundraising loans and join our lending team, the FVP Incredibles!

By Zal Bilimoria, KF9, Ecuador

Over the past four weeks here in Ecuador, I’ve had the opportunity to see much of the country, starting out in Quito working at Fundacion ESPOIR’s administrative office, and now in Portoviejo near the coast to conduct borrower verifications and write journal updates, among other tasks.  Since Ecuador is a relatively small country (roughly the size of Nevada), it’s easy to travel by plane or bus, usually within 4-6 hours to most major cities. This past weekend Kiva Fellow Kimia Raafat and I made our way to Cuenca for the long holiday weekend, where Dia de los Muertos (“Day of the Dead”) and Cuenca’s Independence Day were being observed. Day of the Dead (this past Monday, Nov 2) is a time of remembrance of loved ones who have passed away and a celebration of their lives (no connection to Halloween), while their Independence Day (Tuesday, Nov 3) marked Cuenca’s liberation from the Spanish Empire nearly 200 years ago. Easily the best weekend yet and the most beautiful city in Ecuador, in my opinion.

Enjoy this video montage of our Cuenca-stic weekend!

Zal Bilimoria is a Kiva Fellow based in Ecuador working for Fundacion ESPOIR. Consider making a loan to the working poor of this South American country.

By Prem Thomas, KF9, Manila, Philippines

After visiting many Kiva CCT borrowers, I noticed a trend that the primary business requiring a loan is not the only source of income. In the Philippines side jobs are referred to as “sidelines” or “extra income”. I have met a teachers who also sell clothing, farmers who rent out their plows to neighbors and a TV repair shop that sells ice in plastic bags during hot months. Of the CCT borrowers I’ve met, about half will have some sort of sideline.

Myrna Valencia used her entire Kiva loan to purchase inventory for her Personal Care direct selling business which she sells for a 25% markup. Myrna also has one of the more interesting sidelines I have scene. She recently completed a medical reflexology course and takes blood pressure for her neighbors on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings for 10 pesos (about $0.22 USD):

Looks like things are still okay after a month in Manila.

Myrna also provides massages to her community for 150 to 200 pesos ($3.20 – $4.26 USD) an hour to provide extra income for her family.

Prem Thomas is serving as a Kiva Fellow working with the new field partner Center for Community Transformation Credit Cooperative (CCT) in Manila, Philippines.

To view currently fundraising loans from CCT click here.

You can also join our new lending team here.

By Eva Wu, KF9 Philippines

Bizarre is probably not the best word to describe this client interview, but without a doubt we were intrigued and utterly fascinated by the alien-looking blob we saw sitting pretty before us. Corroi, HSPFI’s Kiva Coordinator and I found ourselves staring at a live (or semi-live) sea cucumber during a visit to HSPFI client and Kiva borrower Ann Lagrada on Camiguin Island.

(This is the second part of my “most memorable client interviews on Camiguin” series – check out “The Most Beautiful Client Interview (Part 1 of 2)” if you haven’t already!)

(If you have a soft spot in your heart, an ongoing and lasting fondness for sea cucumbers like the one above, and the thought of chopping/prepping a sea cucumber for consumption would cause you much undue stress, do NOT click on the “more” link.)

We peppered Ann with questions. I had eaten sea cucumbers before – it’s fairly common in Chinese cuisine – but I had never seen a live one before. Corroi hadn’t known before this that people actually eat sea cucumbers – so I tried my best to describe the slightly glutinous yet crunchy taste of sea cucumbers for her. A little bit like the seaweed dish that we had eaten earlier in the day.

Ann explained that her husband dives at night to catch the sea cucumbers. There are places in the Philippines where sea cucumbers are protected, she added, but there are currently no restrictions on harvesting sea cucumbers in Camiguin. After her husband returns with the catch, she’ll leave the sea cucumbers in small basins until they spew out any leftover sand and innards, then boil and dry them. Every two weeks Ann and her husband sells the dried sea cucumbers to a Filipino agent for $1,500 pesos/kilogram. She said that the agent will then export the dried product to Korea.

Ann estimates that she and her husband sells two kilograms of dried sea cucumbers to the agent every time they meet. At $6,000 pesos a month, this business is bringing in solid income for their family. Jan, the HSPFI project officer (or loan officer) who brought us here later told me that this business had successfully found a niche market and was one of the client businesses that he was most proud of.

Seeing our continued and somewhat lurid fascination for the sea cucumber, which had by this point of the interview ejected its innards, Ann asked for a knife and proceeded to saw the now completely dead sea cucumber in half. It had hardened much more than what I would’ve expected from its slimy exterior.

(Watch the below video at your own risk! Although I assume if you’ve gotten this far, this is probably what you’ve been waiting for…)

Ann’s husband had joined us towards the middle of the interview, presumably to find out why a foreign bumpkin interviewer was getting all excited over his sea cucumbers – joined in some of the answers and showed us his diving flashlight. We wrapped up with a few more questions and thanked them both. As we walked out to another interview, this time with Ann’s mother-in-law Perpetua Lagrada, Jan joked that Koreans liked to eat sea cucumbers because they’re believed to increase sexual drives. To which I laughed and replied, if that’s the case, sadly they haven’t worked on me at all!

Eva Wu is a proud member of KF9, and she’s still head over heels in love with the Philippines and her host MFI, Hagdan sa Pag-uswag Foundation, Inc.! Support HSPFI by lending or by joining the HSPFI lending team today!

By Kimia Raafat, KF9 Ecuador

Last week, I blogged about D-MIRO’s influence in the peri-urban zones of Guayaquil.  There is no way to describe the dedicated D-MIRO staff members and the lengths they go to reach those marginalized from the traditional financial system. So I opted to film a sample day! Here is “My Motorcycle Diary”:

Fun Facts about Ecuador:

1. Ecuador’s currency is the US dollar.  In 2000, Ecuador discontinued their 116-year-old currency (the sucre) in order to ”rein in runaway inflation, encourage investment and reverse capital flight”.  Many locals were unhappy about the switch.  The current president, Presidente Correa was a critic of dollarization, but he acknowledges that it would be more harmful to the economy to change back to the sucre. 
2. Until it rains in Cuenca, there are mandatory power outages in Ecuador!  Guayaquil (the city I am working in) currently has power outages everyday from 7 to 11 AM and from 1 pm to 4 pm (luckily D-MIRO has a generator!).  Each zone in the country has similarly scheduled power outages.  This will continue until it rains near Cuenca (a city 150 miles away from Guayaquil).  The dam near Cuenca (“Represa Hidroeléctrica Daniel Palacios”) is responsible for generating the majority of Ecuador’s hydroelectricity. 
3.  Fingerprint identification is preffered.  Many organizations (including D-MIRO) ask hourly employees to clock-in to work using their finger print (see minute 0:43 of video)
4. You never have to think  about what to wear to work.  Ecuador’s labor laws state that all businesses must have a uniform for their employees.  During the lunch hour, groups of co-workers dine together in coordinated business wear.  I have 3 of D-MIRO’s uniform polos!
5. Ecuadorians have major karoake skills.  Rather than coffee shops on every corner, there are karoake bars everywhere!   There are no stages, everyone remains seated at their table while the restaurant manager passes along the microphone. Karoake is an actual art form, the country is filled with potential “American Idol” talent.
6. Smile, you are on camera! The Guayaquil airport has an employee dedicated to filming every person entering the country from an international destination!  When departing Guayaquil’s “terminal terrestre”, the secure bus companies also have employees that walk around filming each passenger.

Kimia Raafat is a Kiva Fellow (KF9) at a new Kiva partner, D-MIRO  in Guayaquil, Ecuador.  If you would like to know more about D-MIRO please visit the Partner page or Lend!

By Rob Packer, KF9 Kyrgyzstan

As anyone who’s had a brush with Russian will tell you, going somewhere and using the Russian language to describe it is traumatic. It’s a nosy language I feel likes to keep tabs on me and wants to know all kinds of personal details like if I’m walking or running, driving or taking a plane, if I’ll be taking a rucksack or a trolley case, whether I come here often or don’t plan on coming back. I’ve been doing these mental acrobatics for the past month, and although the pleasures of the Russian language should carry a health warning, the more dubious pleasures of the Kyrgyz road really are open to everyone.

You don't know what it took to describe how we got here

I’m going to surprise my MFI colleagues when I say that Kyrgyzstan’s roads and its drivers really aren’t the worst I’ve seen. I’ve seen my friend Paolo overtake miles of traffic jams on Italy’s Amalfi coast by driving at oncoming traffic, I’ve sat in hours of jams in Mumbai and Mexico City, and I’ve been part of the problem riding a scooter in Indonesia. And I’ve learnt that looks can be deceptive, as when my parents’ relief at having a woman drive us to the airport in Guilin, China turned into white-knuckle fear, when we were overtaken by a bus and spent the next 50km avenging her lost honour. After this, whenever we’re sitting in a traffic jam in the rain in Bishkek and I see a Mercedes overtaking us on a grass verge, or we’re labouring along a potholed track in a 4×4 only to be overtaken by an old man in a Lada, I really know that I’m just back my favourite spot in the places where the road is an adventure, i.e. dangerous, and the distractions of the jaw dropping mountainous landscape along the Silk Road could all go badly wrong. And there’s actually something quite endearing about being driven along the road of Kyrgyzstan and passing Ladas with double beds or haystacks strapped to the top. Or wondering if the Russian flag flying upside-down outside the Gazprom petrol station is that way by accident on design. Less endearing is driving in the country at night, where the gentleman’s etiquette, of how to deal with oncoming traffic that I’m used to, has become an updated version of the staple of the 19th-century Russian novel, the duel. Although I’ve yet to see anyone at my MFI do this, the rule seems to be that you dip your headlights as soon as you see your opponent coming and then give them a full beam in the face and point blank range. Part of me hopes that they cackle all the way to the other side of the mountains, but just as likely is that they’d be picked up by the sawn-off light sabres of the GAI, the ubiquitous traffic police found all across the CIS, who seem less interested by your real or imagined infringement and much more interested in the contents of your wallet.

This heading towards you in the night?

The people's car?

One of the most surreal parts of the roads in Kyrgyzstan is what’s driving on it: the roads are full of Mers, the local Russian term for a Mercedes Benz! When I first saw a Kiva borrower from Kyrgyzstan whose dream was to “buy a Mercedes”, it sounded like the pie-in-the-sky kind. Only once you’re in Kyrgyzstan and you see an Audi with a sticker saying KÄRNTEN (Carinthia, a state of Austria) or a Mers with a D bumper sticker (the international code for Germany), do you start to realize that this dream might actually be achievable. What was once a symbol of wealth and prestige, has become the “people’s car”, as my MFI colleagues pointed out to me on my first day. The original bodies mostly come from Germany or Austria and apparently are bought by middlemen in Lithuania, a nation currently more famous in my country for its builders and plumbers rather than mechanics, before being repaired and sold into the Kyrgyzstan market. And when a colleague came back from a conference in Europe, he was often surprised by how small the cars are there.

A Mers, the new people's car

Once again, the lesson I’m choosing to take from this is that looks really can be deceiving. I’ve not yet seen a Kiva borrower with a 15-year-old third-hand Mers, but I think the time will come. I’ve written in a few of my blogs on Kyrgyzstan that poverty looks different here from the standard Western conception. Does living in an apartment block with intermittent water and electricity (some “local colour” that also affects me) make you ineligible for a Kiva loan? Or does the fact that a borrower has a fridge mean that they’re “richer” and less deserving? I would say no, because apartments are a fact of life in Kyrgyzstan, or because we don’t know that saving for a fridge has meant saving for 10 years. And the concept behind microfinance is to reach people who don’t have access to any other source of funding.

I’ll leave you with some Flipcam footage of my most recent trip to Balykchy:

Rob Packer is a Kiva Fellow currently working with Mol Bulak Finance in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Join the Kyrgyzstan lending team. There are borrowers from Kyrgyzstan with Mol Bulak Finance who you can help by contributing to a loan today, and many other entrepreneurs from around the world on the Kiva site.

By Victoria Kabak, KF9, Nicaragua

Before I left for my placement as a Kiva Fellow in Nicaragua, I was browsing my microfinance institution’s web site, trying to see what I could learn from it and to familiarize myself with the organization, AFODENIC, a bit more. I clicked on a link in the left sidebar called “Fuentes de Financiamiento,” or “Sources of Funding.” After the page loaded, I realized that, subconsciously and perhaps naïvely, I had been expecting to see a particular logo we know so well, that comforting, familiar green logo, with its leafy K and its curvy A.

Instead, the large pie graph on the page was labeled with the unfamiliar, non-green, non-leafy logos of three other funders. The smallest piece of that pie provides AFODENIC with funding equivalent to 4 times the amount of its monthly limit on Kiva–the largest, 57.5 times AFODENIC’s monthly limit.

There are a few important points to note at the outset. First, I can’t vouch for how recent these numbers are. Second, because the limits on Kiva are monthly, an MFI can receives up to 12 times that amount of funding in a given year. In fact, when I looked at the numbers on AFODENIC’s partner page on Kiva, the dollar amount of loans that AFODENIC has funded through Kiva is more than what the institution has received from two of the three other funders that were on this web page.  But in any case, Kiva wasn’t on the page and my first thought was, “I guess Kiva isn’t one of its biggest sources of funding.”

I was a little disappointed. I was days away from leaving for Nicaragua, jazzed to get there and still riled up from training. If Kiva didn’t make it on to the pie chart, did it mean that the funding from Kiva lenders wasn’t even registering as a drop in their proverbial ocean? Did that mean being a Kiva partner was making no difference to my MFI?

The answer is no. First of all, after being here for five weeks, I’ve learned that Kiva is a major source of funding for AFODENIC, despite what the web site might make it seem like. But I don’t need numbers, percentages, or dollar amounts to know that Kiva’s support makes a difference to AFODENIC.

Sometimes I sit in on the biweekly comités at the branch office down the street here in Managua. In these meetings, the loan officers present their clients’ applications for new loans and the branch manager approves them and decides how each is going to be funded. When I see how many loan applications are placed in the Kiva pile and I think about what would happen to those clients if AFODENIC wasn’t a Kiva partner, I know that Kiva makes a difference to AFODENIC.

When I visit a client for a journal update and try to explain to them what Kiva is and why I’m there , I usually show them a print-out of their borrower profile on the Kiva site. Many of them become so absorbed in the sheet with their photograph and the description of their loan that I have to wait several minutes before continuing on with my questions. When I watch these borrowers reactions to their own Kiva profiles, I know that Kiva makes a difference to AFODENIC and its clients.

Besides these very tangible experiences I’ve had that have taught me why truly Kiva matters to its field partners, a couple of features of Kiva’s model are also particularly impactful, in my opinion. Not having to pay interest on the funds they receive from Kiva and having the option not to cover losses when a borrower is delinquent or defaults both lessen the financial burdens the MFI has to bear. And funds saved this way are funds that can instead be diverted toward making more loans to clients and creating a financially sustainable organization.

And when it comes down to it, whether Kiva accounts for 30 percent of a field partner’s portfolio or for 1 percent, we’re absolutely working in a context where it’s true to say that every little bit counts. Whether or not Kiva gets any explicit credit on a website or a brochure doesn’t change the level of impact – impact that I see both in the office and out in the field – that Kiva is having in countries around the world.

Victoria Kabak is currently a Kiva Fellow in Nicaragua with field partner AFODENIC. To loan to an AFODENIC borrower on Kiva – because it does make a difference! – please go here.

I have been mistaken for this guy a lot since I've been here

By Adam Preston, KF9, Philippines

The Filipinos are a very generous people.  So generous, in fact, that if they don’t know your name, they will even give you a name – and that name is Joe.  I am greeted in this way no less than 3 or 4 times in a day, coming from men and women both young and old: “Hey Joe!”

As many guide books will tell you, in many parts of the Philippines foreigners especially males of Caucasian decent (read: white dudes) will be greeted as “Joe” referring to the GIs (American soldiers) who had a presence here through World War II.

“Finally, Filipinos have a unique greeting for male (and sometimes female) Westerners: ‘Hey Joe!’ (‘Hey Kano!’ is a less used variation). Both are hangovers from Word War II when the country was overrun by GI Joes or American soldiers (‘kano’ comes form Americano’) and are used ad nauseam.  Of course, if your name’s Joe, you’ll feel pretty special.  If not, you may start to feel like a clown set especially to give the locals a laugh.”

“Philippines”, Lonely Planet, p. 63, Edition 8, 2009

What is interesting about this experience isn’t just that this moniker dates back more than 50 years, but it is  how it is often said, the utter exuberance in which the greeting is delivered.  When waiting for my tricycle and I hear someone shout “Hey Joe!”, oddly, I don’t feel insulted.  When I look over at the guy saying this, he is looking right at me with a big smile on his face.   He seems to be genuinely glad to see me.  I politely turn and wave and reciprocate in the only way that I know how: “Hey buddy”, I respond.

Adam Preston is a Kiva Fellow working with ASKI in Cabanatuan City, Philippines. He answers to both the name his mother gave him and also now to Joe.  To get involved click here.

Alana Solimeo, KF9, Costa Rica

I realized after letting the excitement of Kiva, Costa Rica, and research topics (exhibited in previous post Rice, Beans and an Inspired Hypothesis) settle that I might want to take a step back.  The thing is I hit the ground running here, thanks to the great work of my predecessor Kiva Fellow, the fact that EDESA really is on top of their game, and the enthusiastic charge with which I like to begin things that earned me my nickname Eager Beaver.

As ready as I think I am to lay it down as to why I think EDESA’s model is so successful it will be prudent to spend a blog post proving that it is indeed, successful.  So here I give myself one shot to make you a believer, and then maybe we can jump on Kiva Fellow Suzy’s “What if microfinance really does work?” bandwagon!

While visiting SACRIN, the Community Credit Enterprise in San Cristobal Norte, Costa Rica, I got a chance to sit down for coffee and cake with two members of their board (who are also members/shareholders/borrowers), Luis Cordero and Olman Ceciliano Nuñez, who have served eight of its thirteen years of existence.  What did I learn?

1. Trust is reciprocal between the lender and borrower.  Borrowers trust the ECC because they are involved in its operations.  60 hours of technical training with FINCA Costa Rica go into just forming the ECC!  The relationship then benefits the loan recipients when the ECC can lend without traditional collateral requirements because of the trust and communal knowledge that exists in such relationships.
2. Borrowers understand paying interest because it comes back to them in dividends.  SACRIN has had returns over 80% for its members this year.  Jealous?
3. In 13 years, SACRIN has never seen a loan default.  There might be a few reasons  for this and they can each be attributed to the small neighborly populations served by Community Credit Enterprises.  First, SACRIN starts out providing small loans and only increases loan amounts according to increased debt capacity of members and success with their businesses.  Second, they have a real economic interest in seeing their clients succeed because they are members of the same community.  As such they are tolerant to work with borrowers on restructuring loan terms if something gets in the way of a borrower successfully completing loan terms as they were originally established.  Third, social collateral plays into repayment when the borrowers are interested in establishing themselves as credit worthy and responsible among peers, neighbors, and their own business partners and customers.
4. SACRIN began lending with a capital base established by selling one share of 5000 colones each, roughly $8.50 in today’s currency exchange rate, to 20 members.  They outgrew themselves and sought outside funding from the National Bank and EDESA and now they have a loan portfolio of 103,921,736 colones, or $180,420 which shows a little over 100,000% growth over 13 years.
5. SACRIN has seen its lenders/members/shareholders/neighbors/friends transform their businesses into lucrative enterprises selling goods on the wholesale market and providing services all over the country.  Having started out small, with say, one screen printing, sewing, or knitting machine, these business owners now have many machines, many employees, and strong efficient enterprises.  See recent journal updates for some of SACRIN’s borrowers:

Laura Segura Brenes

Mary Ceciliano Nuñez

Andres Vinicio Romero Romero

Jose Mauricio Padilla Romero

Luis and Olman spoke to me passionately about the history and future of SACRIN and its impressive financial performance and institution/borrower relationship.  They were tossing around numbers, percentages, converting them to dollars making it relevant.  They spoke of success metrics, Christian faith’s role in repayment, perceptions of poverty, but of all the various ways to measure a financial institution’s success, we ended the meeting focused on one:

“The most meaningful growth we’ve seen is personal growth.”

They explained to me that the people involved in the Community Credit Enterprise, including themselves, haven’t received more than a 6th grade education.  In that there’s an immeasurable component of this microfinance model.  These men and women are now part of a national network of financial institutions.  They attend international microfinance conferences.  They get together with peers and neighbors and make finance professionals out of one another.  They gather with the same group and make successful entrepreneurs out of themselves, and more impressive is how they reached out 13 years ago to form the ECC, to help themselves as individuals, with the financial risk and emotional burden that it might not work out.  But they believed it could and worked towards it together.

When 80% returns and 100% repayment rates pale in comparison to an unquantifiable personal growth they achieve while establishing themselves as ingenious members of the productive world…I’ll go ahead and call it a success.  Would you?

Check out the different ways the world applies microfinance by perusing the borrower profiles on Kiva.org and support EDESA by joining our lending team!

By Jane Lim, KF9 Mongolia

Today my envy of other Kiva fellows faded because I finally, finally got to meet Kiva borrowers.

There is a certain sadness that most of these borrowers have. For some it’s buried deep beneath stoicism and the victories of subsequent success, but for others it’s brimming at the surface, and you get the feeling that one more slight push would send them into the chasm. When I take their photos, they never smile – and I’ve thought of asking them to, but I don’t want to if there’s nothing to smile about. The truth is, life has been hard for them.

where i went today: the Chingeltey ger district

Kiva lenders may think they are doing a great thing (and they are doing a good thing of course), but these borrowers don’t get the benefit of the 0% interest rate, and to them, they aren’t being done any favors – because who knows what they had to get through to make those repayments back in full and on time, with interest added. They certainly don’t owe anyone anything, and because of that, when I intrude in their lives with a video and a huge camera, I feel somewhat ashamed.

But it’s not all grey of course. So many in the microfinance industry are in it because they hope, as do I. And the borrowers I meet, they do laugh, but don’t necessarily dream. The reality is that for many, loans are required for survival or working capital, not necessarily to step up or make a significant game-changing investment. Consequently, default rates in the microfinance world are lower than those in the mainstream commercial world, because these borrowers need to repay to get the next loan, and the next, and the next. And perhaps that’s why some of them are willing to go on video, get their photographs taken, answer questions… even though they might not necessarily want to – because they don’t want to risk losing their line of credit.

I realize this post sounds a bit morose, only because one particular borrower made such a strong impression on me. Soft-spoken, it isn’t in her nature to fight. But she has to, because she has two young sons to feed – a little red-faced baby was sleeping soundly on the single bed she has, and her other son, no more than 6, was watching a dubbed version of LOTR while doing homework. The downfall of socialism 20 years ago meant the closure of a lot of government-run factories, and she lost her job. So now she sits in her dimly lit ger, sewing grey gloves, hoping to find a mass buyer.

Hers is the sadness that threatens to overflow.

By Eva Wu, KF9 Philippines

I experienced a lot of firsts during my week in the field visiting HSPFI’s Camiguin Branch. Some good, some intense, all of it exciting. Amongst all these firsts, I’m convinced that I witnessed on Camiguin Island both the most beautiful and the most bizarre client interviews that I’ll get to conduct while here in the Philippines. This post is about the former – check out the latter at “The Most Bizarre Client Interview (Part 2 of 2)“!

A bit of background on Camiguin – I had been excited about this outing for quite a while, because all of my HSPFI co-workers kept telling me about this “island of paradise” that has hot and cold springs; a walkway through an old inactive volcano with stations of the cross that Filipinos from all over visit during Lent; the sweetest lanzones in the Philippines; a sunken cemetery.

Camiguin - A View of the Volcanoes

Corroi (HSPFI’s Kiva Coordinator) and I spent most of the week trekking around with the project officers and interviewing clients, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I can visit Camiguin again and spend more time touring some of the spots. Corroi and the Camiguin Branch staff were very thoughtful though in arranging the schedule – Wednesday turned out to be a work+fun day when we visited a bunch of HSPFI clients who ran souvenir shops, transport services, etc. at popular tourist spots. So we also got to check out some of the sights in between interviews.

At the sunken cemetery we found a HSPFI client who rows tourists over to the base of the massive cross marker. Corroi has an artist’s eye for picking out good backdrops for client interviews – she’s amazingly astute at this – and suggested that we do the interview in the boat while the client was rowing us over! So we did. It was a gorgeous day – bright sunlight, blue skies, aquamarine seas, and something undeniably romantic in the atmosphere – as there should be at this old cemetery, sunk beneath the waves because of a volcano eruption. We lingered beneath the giant cross and listened as the client told us about his business and his family. He runs multiple businesses to support his three children and their education while his wife is working overseas. The hardships that the client described contrasted with the beauty of the day and took my breath away.

After I came back to HSPFI’s head office in Cagayan de Oro I was disappointed to discover that this particular HSPFI client wasn’t posted on Kiva, so I can’t share the actual interview here despite building this entire post around how wonderful it was. Nonetheless, I’m grateful for the opportunity to meet this ambitious client and hear his story. He plans to purchase another boat so he can run more tours and catch more fish.

I’m proud to be working for an MFI that supports individuals like him, and I feel privileged to have found such grace on Camiguin Island. Standing beneath a memorial to the dead, I heard a living testimony to the strength of the human spirit.

Eva Wu is a proud member of KF9, and she’s still head over heels in love with the Philippines and her host MFI, Hagdan sa Pag-uswag Foundation, Inc.! Support HSPFI by lending or by joining the HSPFI lending team today!

By Josh Wilcox, KF9 Peru

Taking a brief recess from borrower profiles and repayment schedules at Kiva’s MFI pilot partner Caja Rural one weekend in Ica, Peru, I escaped to visit the small town of Huacachina, the “oasis of America”, located just a few miles outside the sandy metropolitan hub of Ica. Having become famous for its natural lake enclosed by sand dunes, the tiny city of about 115 people has become an immensely popular tourist destination not only for its aesthetic appearance but also the sandboarding and dune buggies.

For those unfamiliar, sandboarding is very similar to snowboarding except, yep you guessed it, it is performed on sand. First popularized in California in the 1980s, there are now annual Sandboarding World Championships held in Hirschau, Germany. Who knew???

As is the case with many natural phenomenon in Peru (e.g. the Nazca lines), there is a legend behind the picturesque beauty. It is said that a beautiful princess was once apprehended while bathing in a pond by a young hunter. She escaped and fled, leaving behind the pool of water she had been bathing in to become the lagoon. As she retreated across the desert, the folds of her mantle flowing behind her became the surrounding sand dunes. Rumor has it that she still lives down in the lagoon as a mermaid.

Unfortunately, while the lagoon has attracted significant tourist dollars, such economic growth does not come without its downfalls. The Ica province has a very arid climate and private landowners near the oasis began to install wells to access the groundwater. In order to compensate for the reduction in the water level and maintain the lagoon as an aesthetically pleasing tourist destination, the city began a process of pumping water into the oasis from a large water tank kept just outside the oasis. Also, with the influx of wealthy tourists from around the world, the city has experienced an increase in petty theft. Those perusing the dunes alone or at night are particularly vulnerable.

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Josh Wilcox is a Kiva Fellow at Caja Rural Señor de Luren in Ica, Peru as part of the KF9 class.

Please check out Caja Rural’s LOANS or LEND to other South American entrepreneurs and JOIN the Amigos de Caja Rural Señor de Luren lending team!

by Jed Goldstein, KF9, Uganda

After a 10 hr bus journey to Kihihi from Kampala on bumpy dirt roads, it was Aaron Coplands Rodeo ballet that began to play in my mind as I stepped off the bus and began to explore the town that lay before me. Kihihi is the modern Ugandan version of the wild American west that Copland so effectively captures in his compositions. As I explored a bit, I could not help but compare the roars of dirtbikes rolling down the muddy thoroughfare to the click-clock sound made by a horse’s hooves. The expansiveness of the terrain, combined with the rolling, lush hills and the breathtaking vistas, still unspoiled by mini-malls and super sized wal-marts, is really a sight to be seen.

Kihihi is a small town that lies about 500km Southwest of Kampala. For most of the 1990’s little commerce took place there because of various rebel movements that left the place terribly volatile and unstable. In recent years though, the rebel groups have laid down their arms and the town is now ripe for development. Kihihi has the good fortune of being located between two national parks here in Uganda, one of them featuring climbing lions and the other the majestic Rwenzori Mountain range; additionally its close proximity to the Congo means that the town has the potential to become a major center of trade in Southwestern Uganda. For this reason, Pearl Microfinance, has positioned itself with a branch office in the town to offer financial services to the expanding merchant population here.

Business trips are not simply for enjoyment though and while I was eager to explore  Kihihi, there was work that had to be done. I was given by the Kiva coordinator here at the main-office, Grace, a specific task to perform once I had arrived. My mission was to introduce the office employees in Kihihi to Kiva.org and explain the processes and procedures required to post a loan to the Kiva website. Essentially, what we are trying to do here at Pearl is decentralize our Kiva operations to the branch level. This in turn, will allow for a greater volume of postings on the website and potentially, if things go smoothly, Pearl’s monthly fundraising limit being increased.

So after a brief look around, I stumbled into Kihihi’s Pearl office and was offered warm greetings from all of the local staff members. Again, the “you are welcome’s” were plentiful. With sweaty palms, pretty much sweaty everything in fact, I began the presentation that I had prepared right away. I was a bit nervous about communication barriers—most people do speak English here, but at the same time it is not the first language of many— so I made every effort to speak slowly, clearly and not to over-complicate matters. Everything went quite well and throughout the presentation I could tell the loan officers were engaged because they kept on asking questions, a demonstration to me that they understood what was going on.

After the presentation was complete it was time for the final examination. I alerted the Kihihi staff that I was no longer Jed Goldstein as far as they were concerned, but rather would be playing the fictionalized role of Moses Mwami a local fish seller in town who is looking for a loan (I guess those college acting classes do come in handy sometimes). I then instructed them to ask me the questions found on Pearl’s Kiva questionnaire and to take my picture—all the tasks needed to post a profile on the Kiva website. They passed with flying colors, which meant that it was time for me to go back to Kampala.

The Kihihi team and I take some time to pose for a quick picture

After so much travel time to and from Kihihi on overloaded buses and dangerous dirt roads, I kissed the ground once I finally arrived back in Kampala and then curled into bed for much needed rest. Mission accomplished.

By Gavin Sword KF9 Rwanda

I know this is not the first time that I’ve mentioned that my children are Rwandan.  We adopted Savilla and Christian in 2006 when they were both babies. Our girl turns 4 this month while our boy is a few months past 4.  They are the cutest, most adorable little people one could ever hope to know.  They are loving and friendly, kind to each other and to the people they meet.  Part of the reason I wanted to come to Rwanda as a Kiva Fellow was so that they could have the opportunity to spend time in the country of their birth.  To give them a chance to learn the language, make Rwandan friends and live in a land of people who look just like them (not the case in our current home, Vancouver, Canada). Our thinking was not that they would necessarily fully remember the experience, but that it could inform their identity and give them a sense of belonging.  Well, this was the idea anyway.

For our part, my wife and I have been making an effort to immerse the children in the culture. We enrolled them in a local preschool, we chose to ‘home stay’, meaning, we live in the lovely guesthouse of a (delightful) Rwandan family in their large and comfortable compound on the outskirts of Kigali.  This family has 3 children, ages 6, 12  and 13 who are now on school break and love to spend time with our little ones.  Their two older cousins act as babysitters for us, and we are encouraging them all to speak Kinyarwanda with our children.

To their credit, our kids have really made an effort to learn the language (as much or more than I have so far!), which delights everyone they meet.  And they are making friends, but even though they have made new friends in Rwanda and they are undoubtedly Rwandan by birth, they are still viewed differently.  It is not a friendship like one would experience in the West – it is hard to describe.  The fact is that they have many ‘friends’; they are very popular because they are different, though they look the same. In some sense, I sometimes fear they are more like curiosities–amusing to the other children.  They don’t really blend in – I have encouraged them to stop assuming other kids know all about the Jonas Brothers.

My point is we no longer have ‘Rwandan’ children–even at just four years old, they are Westerners now.  To me this feels sad, but short of moving here for good, I can’t see how to change it.  Then again, we’ve only been here one month and who knows what another 2 months will bring.  Though, if I told them that we could fly home tomorrow they would jump with glee – of that I’m certain.

So this is the real truth.  After (just) one month, this profound life-changing experience for our children is not happening like we expected or planned or hoped.  Drat! At times it feels like we are managing their impressions of this experience, which feels a bit forced/awkward.

As much as we try to convey that Rwanda is not better or worse than Vancouver, New York, or Naples, Florida (our previous hometowns) they aren’t buying it.  These are very sweet, candid, perceptive and loving children.  Being immersed in such a now-foreign land for them has amplified their ongoing, unfiltered commentary, asking questions that are at times adorable and others cringe-worthy beyond the normal bounds that most parents expect to endure.  And as parents we are doing our best to offer real answers but sometimes it’s just not easy.  Allow me to list a few below.

Why are there so many bugs here?  Why do the buses travel packed with people like that?  Why aren’t they using forks and knives?  Why does he/she smell so bad?   What happened to his face/leg/arms?  This place is filthy, isn’t it?  Where are those kids’ parents?  Why aren’t they wearing clothes?. Why is there no TV?  Why does the power always go out?  Why is everyone staring at you (Dad)?  Why do people live in such small houses?  I don’t like the smell of this place.  (When beggars run up to our car)– What are they trying to give us?  Why is our house (which is HUGE by Rwandan standards) so small?  Why is the bedding so scratchy?  My pillow is too thin.  Why do we have a guard at our house?  Why does he live outside in a hut? And why is our fence so high?  Why do fences have pieces (shards) of glass on the top of them?  Why is there no hot water for baths?  Why can’t we drink the water?  Why doesn’t anyone have any good toys to play with?  Why do people carry things on their heads?  (They love this skill and are practicing it daily with random, unbreakable, household objects) I don’t like all the mosquitoes, why so many?  (Walking is a big part of the culture here and any distance beyond half a kilometer, our children begin to behave like it’s a death march)  Why is it so far? My legs are too tired, you have to carry me!  (Which seems a bit cushy given that many kids their age and younger are walking FAR greater distances.)   Why is the money so dirty?  Why are the roads so bumpy?  Why do you and mommy want to live here?  When do we go home?  We don’t really like it in Rwanda.

We tried to enroll them in Karate the last two weeks (a bit ambitious at 3 and 4 when the average age was 7 or so). They hated it.  They lacked the ‘discipline’ of the Rwandan children who do as they are told without a break (for 2 hours!).  This did not work so well with little Christian and Savilla, after the novelty of the new karate uniforms wore off (30 minutes or so, they were quite ready to leave and cried until I came to get them).  So, now, I am looking for a soccer group for them to join of their own ages and think that might be a better solution.  Fewer drills, more free form. Also, I am tending to think that the expatriate community may be an easier one to blend with even though it feels like a cop-out or missed opportunity to engage in the Rwandese culture.  But at this point I just want them to have a good time and positive memories.  For me, living in Rwanda isn’t easy either and having the constant questions and unintended criticisms to thoughtfully respond to is exhausting.  Work at my MFI is a cakewalk compared to handling the kids in this culture. It’s hard enough to have many of their thoughts in my own head, never mind voiced within earshot of other locals who are often mightily intrigued by whatever response we offer.

Was it a mistake bringing them here?  Should we have waited till they were older and let it be their decision to come back here and not ours?  Am I just not answering their questions well enough or maybe being too honest?  Perhaps 3 months is not long enough for them to really immerse themselves in Rwandan life – or way too long for their first visit and just a two-week trip would have sufficed?  Have we raised entitled, wimpy North American kids already!?  I surely hope not.

As an aside, we recently returned to the austere but loving orphanage where we got our children, and it was a deeply moving experience.  Not so much for our children–they were happy to be the stars of the show among hundreds of kids. They handed out candies and treats and enjoyed the attention. On the wall of the room full of cribs was a photo of our family, sent from a happy Christmas in Florida, collaged with other photos of families of adopted children abroad.  A symbol of hope for those still there, though we learned that out of 140 children only 6 were slated for adoption this year.  For my wife and I, it was a moment that will take time to process.  Maybe that is the whole point of this, we are trying to process and understand this experience for our children.  They are just being kids, asking lots of questions/making comments.  If we just relax a bit more, it mightn’t be such a big deal. Rwanda will always be a part of their life even though this experience is not unfolding quite the way we expected.  As they say in Kinyarwanda; Ibyiza biri imbere – ntugire ikibazo.  Roughly translated into English it means; No need to worry – everything is going to be just fine”

So I’ll end with a little story. As I mentioned, we live in the guesthouse of a Rwandan family. The little boy, six-year-old Jimmy, is very fond of our four-year-old Christian.   Jimmy is learning to speak and write English and last night he made a big deal about coming over to give Christian a note-card he had written to him that read:

Dearest Christian,

How nice that you are here.

You and I will never be friends.

God Bless, Jimmy

Christian, of course, was thrilled when I read it to him (slightly corrected).

How nice that we are here, indeed.

Please consider a loan to an entrepreneur funded by Vision Finance Company in Rwanda – if there are no loans listed on the site for funding, please check back again in a day or so and we will have uploaded more inspiring stories.   We are short staffed and working as hard as we can to get as many worthy people funded as possible.

Also, you could join the VFC Lending Team which is a small but growing group of individuals committed to allocating their interest free – karma rich cash to the inspiring entrepreneurs of Rwanda.   Or, if you’re new to Kiva – why not join today!

PS – Gavin is beginning to meet with clients in the field and wanting to share the connection of being a fellow entrepreneur he is having a devil of a time explaining that he sells motorized shades.

By Kelly McKinnon, KF9 Leon Nicaragua

I fell off the sidewalk tonight. It was bound to happen.

The sidewalks here are raised and tiled and narrow. No extra room is allotted for lamp posts or stoops or two-way traffic, all must exist in no more than four feet dedicated to pedestrian passages.

The rules to walking in Leon are thus: a gentleman passes on the outside, there is plenty of room, and greet passersby with a smile and an “Adiooos.”

My days begin with these passages. Rather, as I, dedicated tom-boy, wobble to work in high heels, these passages are the best things about beginning my days: I wave to the tour office and the guards outside the mill. I strut until I see Yader, he greets me with my daily kiss (on the cheek). On Yader’s corner, across from the park of poets, at the intersection with the stoplight, is the lady who grills corn. Every day she does something wonderful like wearing aprons with row upon row of frills. We bottle neck at her grill.

At night the sky is green with blue clouds and lightening. Again tonight, my walk home is cluttered with political statements, fireworks and flags and a man yelling into a microphone. It makes me nervous. Not its political nature, I come from a political city. It makes me nervous because I don’t understand it. Coming from a political city, I know what it means not to understand—it is a careless thing.

The uniformed school girls roll their eyes. It’s because of the reelections, pues. They step off the curb and walk on, blue pleats bounce knowingly after them. They leave me tottering on the sidewalk.

Lenin waves to me. Of course I remember him, he works nearby and offered to cut my hair. We chat, he offers to walk with me. I decline, I don’t yet know how to walk two by two.

It is as the buses pass and the fireworks burst, that I am nervous and stumble backwards. Lenin reaches for my wrist and gently chastises. Be more careful, he says. And the buses grind pass. I am fine, though still nervous. I wobble back towards the lady grilling corn.

I walk home wishing for more stability: for the school girls, for our clients, for the lady who grills corn, for this country. But who am I, sidewalk nemesis in high heels, to wish for such things? I seem to be the only with having difficulties with balance.

Kelly McKinnon is a Kiva Fellow currently working with Fundacíon Leon 2000 in Leon, Nicaragua.

By Dennis A. Espinoza, KF9 Cameroon

Saludos Kiva Community –

My name is Dennis Espinoza and in a few hours I will be leaving for Africa to serve with GHAPE, a longstanding Kiva partner based in Cameroon.

Before I kickoff the 25 hour trip from Chicago, USA to Bamenda, Cameroon, a personal note about the reason I’m on this journey and what I selfishly hope to get from it….you know, beyond just a great way to meet great likeminded people, i.e. cute ladies (which it is for those of you who are considering applying to the program!).

While she lived independently for about half of her life in one of the most affluent neighborhoods in Chicago, my late grandmother would’ve been difficult to distinguish from many of the entrepreneurs Kiva helps today.  As a young mother she was driven, passionate, ambitious and poor.   Though she never considered herself to be impoverished, my grandmother developed wisdom through lessons, accomplishments and failures she and my grandfather experienced by overcoming poverty.  “Ahorre sus centavitos para poder contribuir cuando sea necesario” she’d often tell me, which essentially means, save wisely in order to contribute when called upon.  This principle, beyond an important basis for our financial decisions and the reason I became a Kiva lender, drills down to the basis of a community.  Giving and receiving connects people.  Kiva makes that happen.  We can all contribute.  We are all in need.

So, in addition to sharing the stories of how borrowers in Cameroon are doing, my personal mission on this trek is to learn about how you and I would benefit from a Kiva entrepreneur’s progress if we lived down the road.  What would a Kiva entrepreneur give you if you were in dire need?  a loan?  a ride?  a laugh? a meal? nothing?  We are firefighters, consultants and teachers as well as Kiva members / lenders.  What other roles do these borrowers serve?  What “secondary” contributions to a community are you enabling as a result of empowering someone through your loan?  Inspired by my grandparents, friends, conversations with Kiva Fellows and their posts on this blog, I’d like to explore how a borrower could literally meet your needs once able to do so.  As I do, I look forward to sharing the laughs, hopefully not many tears, and the overall experience with all of you.

I’m honored to play my part in building Kiva’s connections while out in the field and I truly hope your contribution through lending provides you with a similarly privileged feeling as a very important member of this community.

Con carino,

Dennis A. Espinoza is currently serving as a Kiva Fellow with GHAPE in Bamenda, Cameroon.

By Rob Packer, KF9 Kyrgyzstan

In the middle of October I spent a week away from the Bishkek office of my MFI, Mol Bulak Finance, to see microfinance in action in their Balykchy branch. Part of the training as a Kiva Fellow is to complete an online course from the United Nations Development Program on microfinance, which seemed to tell me continuously that microfinance is a low-margin, high-cost business. No matter how many times this message is drilled into me, it still comes as a shock.

The town of Balykchy sits at the start of Lake Issyk-Kul, the world’s second-largest mountain lake after Lake Titicaca. The lake is a summertime holiday Riviera and a former Soviet naval testing ground far away from the prying eyes of the West. Compared with its more visitor-friendly lakeside neighbours of resort town Chopon-Ata and trekking or skiing centre Karakol, Balykchy suffers from a bad reputation in Bishkek. Bishkek was a sea of yellow leaves at the time, but I was warned that I would need warm clothes for the cold and sunglasses for the wind. As we drove out from Bishkek, the ever-present fields and mountains became drier and when we finally left the steppes and arrived in the massive valley of Issyk-Kul, the landscape looked more and more like a mountainous desert, camels included. During my time there, I never experienced Balykchy’s gale force delights but the wind’s presence seemed to hang over the town like a dragon in the mountains.

The modern-day Silk Road outside of Balykchy.

"Downtown" Balykchy

For the first few days, I was shadowing Balykchy’s loan officers as they went about their business. Far from being a simple process, I was struck by the number of steps involved and the amount of time it took to complete it thoroughly. The initial stage of the process is where the group first applies for a loan and fills out their requested amounts. Later on, the loan officer gets into a car to visit each of the borrowers at home to work out whether their loan applications are realistic. All of the borrowers who I visited at home lived close to the centre of Balykchy, but even then this can take longer than you might expect. The higgledy-piggledy idiosyncrasies of the Soviet-era housing estate, where it seems you can never predict what number a building might have and where an unclear number will have you on the 5^th floor of an apartment block knocking on the wrong door; once you realize you have the wrong apartment you’re back to square one and have to go back outside to find the right building, stairwell and apartment all over again. After a morning of counting and grading TVs (ubiquitous) and fridges (less common), I was struck by how in countries with a long capitalist history, you can often get an idea someone’s standard of living by looking at the outside of their house, but in former communist countries you really can’t: these blocks stretch from Tallinn to Vladivostok and from the Arctic Circle to the borders of Afghanistan and Iran, and look, pretty much, identical. The other impression really wasn’t a surprise: microfinance borrowers come from all walks of life. On my home visits, we met a woman who resells cooking oil as her main business, and a man whose salary as a controller isn’t enough and who is buying a milk cow to sell the milk. With insufficient wages a sad truth about life in Kyrgyzstan, the purchase of a cow is often seen as a way to make ends meet.

Mol Bulak Finance's Balykchy branch

The next stage of the loan process is back at the branch office where loan officers go over the group’s business plan. This was the part of the process I always found hardest to understand, because it was almost entirely in Kyrgyz and I often found myself peering over the loan officer’s shoulder to decipher (I find Cyrillic handwriting almost impossible to read) what they were writing in Russian in the paperwork, or reading people’s body language. I could tell that for some of the women, the business plan process was the first time they’d had to think carefully about their income and their expenses: some had obviously done their homework while others really had to wrack their brains. Another important part of the business plan process is to decide who will be the group leader and the group treasurer, and in one of the business plan meetings I sat in on, the group took a lot of prompting to decide on these. As Raushan, one of the loan officers explained afterwards, you can often get an idea of who would be the right person by their personality. And later on the branch manager, Dinara explained that these roles carry a lot of responsibility that borrowers are sometimes unwilling to take up. I felt it summed up one of the key dynamics of group lending, which is often safer for the MFI and for the chances of the borrower receiving a second loan because it is implicit (or explicit) that the other group members will cover if another member falls behind, but at the same time, the members of the group know that there is a chance they will have to cover that amount – and have a very uncomfortable conversation with a friend. Once the business plan has been finalized, the final stage at Mol Bulak is called certification where a senior loan officer discusses the details of the loan and business plan with the group, and after the loan has been disbursed and distributed between the members, it’s time to put that business plan into action.

Discussing the business plan, or biznes-plan in Russian. (Taken at the Kochkor office)

Borrowers from Balykchy, Kochkor and Bokonbayevo will be coming onto Kiva in November 2009, you can keep up with the latest from Kyrgyzstan through the Kyrgyzstan Lending Team on Kiva. In the meantime, there are borrowers with Mol Bulak Finance from other parts of Kyrgyzstan who you can help by contributing to a loan today, and many other entrepreneurs from around the world on the Kiva site.

The shores of Lake Issyk-Kul.

Mol Bulak, Balykchy staff on the shores of the lake one day after work. I think they wanted to see if I'd take the bait and go for a dip.

Sunset on the Alatau mountains. Issyk-Kul sits between two mountain ranges. These are the more northern ones.

Rob Packer is a Kiva Fellow currently working with Mol Bulak Finance in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.

By Sheethal Shobowale, KF9, Peru

In Cusco, Peru, Halloween is celebrated in full force.  It kinda feels like home (side note: home for me is Brooklyn, New York).  Back in New York, I usually put some pumpkins on my stoop and make some curried pumpkin soup. This year, Cynthia McMurry (Kiva’s Field Support Specialist in South America) and I are going to carve a zapallo and make some soup.  So it will feel like home!

Here are some photos from Halloween in Cusco -

I’ll add more over the weekend when I see people dressed up and out trick ‘o treatin’… Hopefully I’ll get to see some cute little kids dressed up like pumpkins.

Happy Halloween from Cusco, Peru!

Celebrate Halloween by lending to Kiva borrowers.

Sheethal Shobowale is currently serving as a Kiva Fellow in Cusco, Peru with Asociación Arariwa

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.

1(b). The positive idea behind Kiva-as-a-marketplace is to support the notion that only the most eligible borrowers get funded.  But, I think if we pay extra close attention to the “loans expiring soon” page, we may begin to see patterns.  For example, as I write this, the two loans closest to expiration are men and from Lebanon.  These loans are followed by several from Bolivia, which are in turn followed by a few from Peru (which could also be due to Kiva having more MFI partners in this area).  However, I don’t see any fruit sellers or women from Africa close to expiration, for example.  Now is a good time to reflect on Kiva’s core mission: “connecting people for the sake of alleviating poverty.” Does this show us that “lending for the sake of alleviating poverty” is actually, in practice, proving itself to look like “lending to certain people that fit our notion of poverty for the sake of alleviating their poverty”? And is this fair?

We can all agree that at times throughout history, capitalism has led to discrimination against certain classes and groups of people.  Minority rights cannot be left up to the voting majority; the constitution and the courts must protect them.  The clause “all men are created equal” was the premise most effectively used in the fight for civil rights, as it pointed out a gaping contradiction between the social reality and the constitution itself.  But ultimately, court cases like Brown v. Board of Education led to the expanded freedoms we now see today.  Otherwise, a simple popular vote may have found that the will of the majority (the ‘tyranny of the majority’), perhaps themselves raised with discriminatory beliefs, would’ve refused the minority group’s different interpretation of that clause.

Humans – even in mass – aren’t always right.  During Kiva Fellows training, we learned that certain stories are traditionally funded faster on Kiva than others (e.g. fruit stand vendors over taxi drivers).  If all other things are equal – meaning those two borrowers are suffering the same level of poverty and have an equal chance that the loan will vastly improve their respective businesses – is that ethical?  While fostering growth in the fruit stands is awesome, Kiva still has that mission to help the poor.  So is it okay to treat the poor like a market and only take care of some poor individuals over others because their businesses are more fashionable and appealing to us?  This is something for us to reflect upon.

2. Kiva encourages our MFIs to use the new funding to further one of Kiva’s goals: bringing financial services to areas that are traditionally left out of the financial sector.  So let’s say that in line with our goal, one of our MFIs reaches out to a new group of people, perhaps spending significant resources traveling to a rural village eight hours away from the nearest office.  Then, we don’t find these borrowers’ stories to be compelling enough to fund, and our MFI must forfeit services for the new group of people.

Now, I anticipate that one of the counterarguments to this point is that loan expiration is to reflect the will of the lenders.  This example allows us to turn away from the lender view and assume the perspective of MFIs on the ground.  We have all heard about plenty of charities who spend frivolously creating completely unsustainable projects in other countries; that is precisely why the lot of us were attracted to Kiva in the first place!  The example above could be detrimental to our relationship with our MFIs, not to mention our mission.  When we encourage an MFI to do something with our new funding, and then hold back the funding, we are looking at a waste of time and money on the part of the MFI.  Is that what we really want?

3.  Loan expiration might unintentionally incentivize our MFIs to begin embellishing their borrower profile descriptions, as more “dramatic” or “interesting” stories (e.g. woman lost her husband, makes artisan crafts, and has 8 kids) get funded over more “boring” ones (e.g. young, single man with a DVD shop and 2 kids).  Thus, if the MFIs see they are losing money to other Kiva MFIs who are posting great stories, they may begin to be less transparent with Kiva by embellishing their borrowers stories.  Transparency is the hardest to combat when there is a major stake at risk; in this case, it is much needed funding for the MFIs.  I think loan expirations could set Kiva up for transparency issues from our many field partner MFIs.  Logistically, this would be really hard to combat.

4.  My final point stems from a comment I read on a recently posted article that was critical of Kiva.  To paraphrase, the commenter was critical of the Kiva site because on the site, loan expiration appears to indicate the borrower doesn’t get funded.  In reality, all of the borrowers that we see on the site are already selected and funded beforehand by the MFIs, as it is the most efficient way for Kiva and the MFIs to work together (for a more in-depth explanation, click here).

Kiva does put a time clock in red that counts down to loan expiration.  Some of you may be thinking, “yeah, but it’s not that confusing, I understand how it works.” Let’s take a look at one of our popular lending teams, Late Loaning Lenders.  The team page says that they loan because they “hate to see loans being left unfunded on Kiva. If the Field Partners feel that the entrepreneur deserves to be funded, so do we.”  Then in the ‘About us’ section, it reads, “Loans that are nearing expiry won’t get funded if they don’t get noticed. We try to find them and get them noticed.”

Because our MFIs pre-qualify and pre-disburse each loan on the site, these borrowers do get funded even if they expire on Kiva.  Their MFI will have to front the capital itself instead of using Kiva capital, which of course is less than ideal for the MFI.  But, it does not effect the individual borrower you are looking at.

It is worthwhile to think more in depth about the biases we carry when selecting loans.  My sister and brother-in-law, for example, rightfully chose not to fund butcher shops because they are both vegetarians.  We all deserve the right to make that choice.  But, lets think about choices we make unconsciously.  For example, the lot of loans close to expiration from Bolivia: are there some internal biases we might have against Bolivia?  Or do we simply not know much about the country? We would have to wait a while in order to reliably discern whether or not such patterns are emerging, so I am fully aware that this point is very hypothetical.  Nevertheless, I think it important to examine now rather than later.

The last charity I worked for was heavily criticized for its use of “poster children,” i.e. children in wheelchairs on posters meant to ‘guilt’ people into giving; as a result, there were protests at fund-raising events and vital dollars were lost. Hindsight is 20/20.  I hope this post at least helps us get our wheels turning now so that we can ensure that we are doing the best thing for our lenders, borrowers, MFIs, and Kiva as a whole.

Suzy Marinkovich is a Kiva Fellow at new Kiva partner CIDRE in Cochabamba, Bolivia, the second of her three placements.  She has a wholehearted passion for microfinance, social justice, and poverty alleviation.  Suzy is most excited to listen to the incredible stories of Kiva borrowers in South America and let them know how much they continually inspire us all.

By Ibrahim Oumarr Jalloh, Kiva Coordinator, Salone Microfinance Trust, Sierra Leone

There is a lot of wealth at the top of a palm-tree.  Many would like to reap the benefits it possesses.

The palm-wine taper wants the palm-wine, the palm-oil producer wants the palm-oil, the mats designers and broom makers want the palm-leaves – even the snakes and rats want to feed from the palm fruits.

There are no rules about who is allowed to try to climb and reach the top of the palm tree to get what they want, but it is clear, because of the difficulty of getting to the top, that adhering to the policies of the palm-tree is crucial to success.  There should be no thoughts about possible cunning ways to get to the top – one needs to begin from below and then work to the top.  When one reaches there, one can reap whatever benefit there is.

A get-rich-quick-at-all-cost syndrome has taken grip on the thinking and behaviors of many in my community, so much so that many are being led to deeper poverty.  This get-rich-quick syndrome is especially prevalent on the poor of the poorest.  These ones who inherited poverty, the ones who were born and found nothing in their name and the ones who dwelled with this reality throughout their early youthful ages.

The parents of these ones, only thinking of where the next meal would come from, had no time to think of how to give any form of formal education or technical skills to their children.  Instead, the children were used as a child laborers.  They spent their time selling peanuts, water or plastic bags here and there to supplement the family’s daily food allowance.

I want to follow the path of one of these children to show how their lack of patience leads them to be unable to reap the benefits of the top of the palm tree.

At a late age, a wave of realization struck a young man who was born into the kind of poverty described above.  He said to himself “no, this situation is deplorable, I must fight poverty, I must not remain poor.”

He decided to take up trading – this being the only skill his parents gave him.  After sometime, he noticed that at his age, when he compared himself with the capital he owned, he had not achieved what he wanted.  “Oh” he cried, “business has not been growing the way I had wanted it to – capital is too small and yet I want a business commensurate with my age.  How unfriendly is world of business!”

Then, like a dream come true, he heard of micro-finance institutions.  He heard that they had come to help the economically active poor and he knew he fell in this pool. “This is the right time to match-up with other business people, to get a business that matches-up with his age” he told himself.  I must go and get this loan, he thought.

But alas, micro-finance institutions like the palm-tree have imposed policies that limited this guy’s speed to accessing the loan.

“Man, you have to belong to a group in order to access this loan. Man, the loan amount you will receive from us is only dependant on your current business size,” the people at the microfinance institution told him.  These policies seemed very unreasonable to this guy – since he had wanted to do away with poverty now and here.

“The initial loan size of $ 100 is too small, I want to buy this and that, if I am able to get this and that I will be able to make this and that profit”, he cried to himself. Without grace, wisdom and contentment, he began to think of cunning ways to the top of the palm-tree.

Similar to this client is the Loan Officer.  He too was born poor and had lived and dined with poverty for donkey years. But fortunately for him, unlike the client, he was able to get some formal education.  Now, he can read and write, and can speak some little English.  He had hated his life-long-companion (poverty) for far too long and had wanted so desperately to part with him.

The Top

But alas, the palm-tree insists that there are no short cuts to the top. Without grace, wisdom and contentment with whatever little salary he was receiving, this Loan Officer began to try figure out cunning ways to get to the top of the palm-tree as quickly as possible.

It is often said, two like things will always attract each other.

Each micro-finance institution, like any religion or dogma, has rules and policies to keep its followers on the right path.  Any deviation, thinking of oneself to be cleverer then the rules, will lead one astray. Some of these rules are: be part of a group of at least *a certain varied number of* members; group members must know each other VERY WELL; group members must not be RELATED to each other; your loan size is dependant on your business capital; and the list goes on and on.

But in this case, the client begged to the Loan Officer to overlook some of these rules, and the Loan Officer supported him. “That loan size is very small for me” said the client, “and what will be my commission?” asked the Loan Officer.  In the end, they struck a deal and the rules were bent or readjusted to meet the client’s comfort.  The MFI remained ignorant about this alliance that had been formed in the field.  Eventually, a bad loan was disbursed.

Repayment remained good for the first five months, but soon delinquency began to show up and eventually even a loan default showed. In some cases, like this one, the clients’ family members will have to repay the loan and in other cases, client will have to runaway. When Loan Officer is found guilty of such a corrupt practice, he is fired and sometimes ended-up in police cells. The “get rich quick at all cost syndromes” has at last brought them greater poverty.

When this happens at micro-finance institutions, micro-finance as a tool to reducing poverty is questioned.  Delinquency and default cases will always be the end result of this unholy alliance by the Loan Officer and the client.  But unfortunately, it is micro-finance that is questioned and not the route causes to the delinquency or default case.

Micro-finance institutions can be of a great blessing to any community they finds themselves in, if the clients are honest to themselves and are willing to adhere to the policies of the MFI.  And, it is even more important, that the MFI adheres to micro-finance best practices.

Most of our clients are hungry, illiterate and ignorant. They are attracted to the top of the palm-tree and they want to get there at all cost and at a go. Loan Officers must be wise and strong enough against all temptations (bribes and gifts) not to feed them with more than they can chew.

To both the client and Loan Officer I say, “POVERTY”, especially chronic poverty “can not be bull dozed – you must climb the palm tree!”

Make a loan to a borrower from a organization committed to helping people reach the top!