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Showing 1-25 of 36 results
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Update From The Field: Client Visits In Bethlehem, A New Partnership In Cameroon + A Peek Into A Loan Officer’s World
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 27 February 2012
Compiled by Allison Moomey | KF16 & KF17 | Bénin KF17 fellows have now made their way into the field, which means new workplaces, new countries, and new cultures for us all. Even more importantly it means fascinating new blog posts from every corner of the globe for you.
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Some Politics with your Rice and Fish?
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 26 February 2012
David Suk | KF 17 | Senegal It’s been a constant refrain in e-mails from family, friends: “Are you okay over there? It sound’s dangerous. Be careful!” I arrived here in Senegal February 1st, just five days after the Constitutional Court ruled that Abdulaye Wade, Senegal’s incumbent president, may seek a third mandate, even though [...]
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5 Unexpected Things about Dakar, Senegal
Blog: Two Backpackers - 6 September 2011
Rachael Cullins of Girl, Guy, Globe shares some unexpected experiences while living in Dakar, Senegal as an expat. The city of Dakar, Senegal is often called the “Paris of West Africa.” But don’t let the (nick)name fool you – I’ve been to Paris and I live in Dakar, and Dakar is no Paris. This crazy, [...]
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Updates from the Field: Costs of Kiva, Donkey Shares + the Law of Diminishing Marginal Returns
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 5 September 2011
Over the course of their fellowship, each Kiva Fellows class gleans a better understanding of innerworkings of microfinance and how a microfinance institution (MFI) can tip the scales of success.
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Of Chinese Proverbs and Gambian Donkeys
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 31 August 2011
by Tim Young, KF15, Senegal Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Give a man a donkey and you feed him for at least five years, providing the donkey is well treated and doesn’t get sick. On a recent trip to the Gambia, Kiva Fellow Tim Young visited a fascinating project, which has for the last 10 years or so has been fighting poverty, by helping the local people help their working animals.
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Updates from the Field: Loan Sharks, Snapshots + “the Country with a Smile”
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 29 August 2011
Each Kiva borrower enjoys his or her own borrower profile page. We've all seen these pages: they acquaint us with the borrower's story, plans for the future, country, and a photo in their business or home. Borrower profiles present us with a clear snapshot of the ebbs and flows of a borrower's life.
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Possunt quia posse videntur
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 25 August 2011
In this post, Kiva Fellow Tim Young, fortiter in re, suaviter in modo, shares some observations from a Fellow's work in the field.
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Update from the Field: Working Animals, Green Microfinance + The Ends of the Earth
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 1 August 2011
Compiled by Kathrin Gerner, KF15, Togo This week, learn how microfinance could help working animals and their wild cousins in Senegal. Find out more about pigs in Indonesia and how pig waste can be put to good use with biogas digesters. Then understand more about the infrastructure difficulties facing a Kiva partner in Sierra Leone.
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Working Animals, Conservation & Microfinance
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 27 July 2011
In this post Kiva Fellow Tim Young considers two successful examples of organisations working with local communities to improve the livelihoods of working animals and their wild cousins, and considers how microfinance could be used to help finance, support and further these efforts.
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Update from the Field: Dangerous Streets, New Vocabulary + A Senegalese Spring
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 11 July 2011
Compiled by Kathrin Gerner, KF15, Togo This week, the Kiva fellows invite you to accompany them across Africa and South and Central America: Take a walk in the streets of San Salvador. Improve your language skills by adding a few words in three of South Africa's most widely spoken languages to your vocabulary. Look poverty in the face in Cameroon. Continue by learning more about the latest riots in Senegal. Find out how money helps to provide dignity in Ecuador. And finish by learning about the importance of family unity in El Salvador.
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A Senegalese Spring?
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 6 July 2011
by Tim Young, KF15, Senegal "Y en a marre!” the radio shouts as our 4X4 makes its way along narrow dusty roads to a borrower meeting some 40 kms from Thies. It is the 28th June, the day after the latest serious riots here in Senegal and the four of us bouncing around in the car listen intently. Last night I arrived home to find the roundabout outside my flat once again blocked by burning tyres, while large crowds watched peaceably from the side roads.
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Update from the Field: New Partners, Country-Specific Microfinance + Stories of a Kiva Fellowship
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 20 June 2011
Compiled by Kathrin Gerner, KF15, Togo This week, fellows located on three different continents were busy writing blogs to share their experiences. Learn what it takes to become a new Kiva partner in Ecuador, experience family-style microfinance in Lebanon, find out about a unique pig loan product in Indonesia, and get the inside scoop about being a Kiva fellow in Senegal.
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This. Is. Africa! Some stories of a Kiva Fellowship
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 17 June 2011
Tim looks at some of the different aspects involved in being a Kiva Fellow, from meeting innovative borrowers to appearing on TV!
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Update from the Field: Unsung Heroes, Community Alliances + and Mission Statements Made Reality
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 30 May 2011
Compiled by Kate Bennett, KF15, Ecuador This week in the field fellows across the world explore the factors that make microfinance and its successes a reality. In Kenya, we meet the actors who reach out to borrowers everyday, at any and all degrees of their own discomfort. In Nicaragua, we discover that high aspirations can [...]
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Kiva in the Community!
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 26 May 2011
Tim gives his first impressions of how a Micro-Finance Institution interacts with the local community it serves, gets to know the personalities of the Dakar suburb of Yoff and even tries for an early sneaky appearance on national TV!
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“TIME” in Senegal
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 6 December 2010
By Lorin Alvarez, KF13, Senegal Coming from New York, the one thing that has taken me a little while to get used to has been the “pace” of things here in Senegal. I have been programmed to always be on time for appointments and meetings; allocate my time as productively as possible; and once on [...]
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Unusual Journeys: Swimming to South Africa
Blog: Inside the Travel Lab - 4 June 2010
Well, I thought I was a pretty active and adventurous person, scaling ice walls and climbing mountains and even managing the staircase after a busy day in the hospital. Then I heard about Rob...
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Today’s workers are tomorrow’s leaders
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 3 April 2010
Employees of Caurie Microfinance can be characterized by three traits: they work hard, long and passionately! How come?
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Roger and me and the entrepreneurs: encouraging encounters
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 6 March 2010
When a lender looks at the profile of a borrower on kiva.org, he is fed with lots of information about this individual. The reverse is not always the case, as Taylor Akin pointed out in her great blogpost. At least with lenders who have created a personal lender-profile, it is possible to create a two way communication which fulfills Kiva’s goal of connecting people through lending.
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Live Music from Senegal
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 22 February 2010
Several times last week I woke up to the sound of explosions, which were not too close but not too far away either. At first I thought they might be leftover fireworks from Carnival but I quickly realized that I was listening to a gunfight between the Senegalese army and rebel troops from the Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance. I arrived in the town of Ziguinchor, the regional capital of Casamance, aware that for the past 30 years there has been a “low density war” between the Senegalese government and separatists.
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Local knowledge remains crucial
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 21 February 2010
Caurie Microfinance, the MFI I’ve been working at as a Kiva Fellow for two weeks, doesn’t work like a bank in our part of the world. The key difference is that Caurie MF doesn’t do business with individual customers, but rather with groups of customers, so-called "Bancs Villageoises" (meaning Village Banks; an individual bank would be correctly called "Banque".
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Lady Breaks Down
Blog: A Lady in London - 21 February 2010
As of two days ago my Africa adventure was going smoothly. Despite flight connections on several different airlines, a number of multi-hour taxi rides, and a myriad of hotel reservations, my boyfriend and I had not encountered a single snag.
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Lady at Les Collines de Niassam
Blog: A Lady in London - 20 February 2010
After our final day in Dakar, my boyfriend and I got back in our taxi for the long drive down the hot dusty coast of Senegal. Passing small villages with cinder block buildings and thatched roofed huts, donkey carts moving slowly down the roadside, and towns full of colorful tourist shops, we eventually came to the end of the paved road. Not stopping there, we pushed further south along a potholed red dirt track flanked on either side by dry brush punctuated by centuries old baobab trees.
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Lady in Dakar
Blog: A Lady in London - 17 February 2010
After six days of non-stop traveling, my boyfriend and I woke up on Monday and decided that we needed to give ourselves a little bit of time to relax.We sat by the pool at Le Meridien in Dakar from 10am until almost 2pm, reading books and sipping café au lait. I have to admit that I had a hard time with it. Being type A++, I wanted to be on the move, exploring more of Dakar.However, I was also exhausted and running low on energy, and knew that I needed to take some time to rest if I wanted to keep up the pace of the first half of the trip.
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Begging – A Sign of Development?
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 15 February 2010
Whether at home or abroad no one likes to see people begging for money. In the countries where most Kiva Fellows come from it’s a sad sign of social dysfunction and a failure to provide adequate opportunities for everyone. But in the developing world could it actually be a sign of progress? After all, if a country can support begging, then it must be generating income beyond mere subsistence.
