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Showing 1-25 of 34 results
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Update from the Field: Translation Follies, Contemplating Kindness and Comfort and KF Cribs
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 21 May 2012
Compiled by David Gorgani | KF17 | Dominican Republic This week's stories from the field span topics ranging from ill-equipped law enforcement to the "luxurious" living places of Kiva Fellows.
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Update from the Field: Thoughts on Wealth, Religion and History, Foods from the Field, and a Day in the Life of a Fellow
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 7 May 2012
Compiled by David Gorgani | KF17 | Dominican Republic As our fellowships wind down and as the first batch of KF17 fellows packs up to head home, the time has arrived to reflect on our experiences in the field and on the realities faced on a daily basis by the people living in the countries in which we've spent t
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Sweet Deliciousness
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 4 May 2012
Compiled by Michael Slattery | KF17 | Togo Despite the often upbeat tone of fellows’ posting on the blog, I’ll be the first to admit that the position entails some universal hardships. There is the occasional social isolation that leaves you Saturday night at home with a book and bottle of the local plonk, despite apparently [...]
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Down the Hatch
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 25 April 2012
Michael Slattery | KF17 | Togo For those who love to eat as much as I do, I salute you and call you henceforth my brothers, my sisters, my true fellow companions in life. Eating is a passion of mine; I’ve had a good run thus far and hope to have many more good days [...]
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Update from the Field: World Happiness, Food Aid + When Beauty and Poverty Collide
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 17 April 2012
Compiled by Allison Moomey | KF16 & KF17 | Bénin Now there comes a time in every Kiva fellow's life when... he or she begins contemplating, analyzing, and trying to make sense of the past few months' experiences. We've learned how to navigate busy streets, seen joyful faces, and witnessed trials in the lives of clients.
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Watership Down and the World Happiness Report
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 11 April 2012
Michael Slattery | KF17 | Togo This past week, a paper called the World Happiness Report came out. According to the report, Togo came in dead last in happiness among all the countries of the world. By no means a wealthy country, the Togolese seem for all intents and purposes like an outwardly happy people, [...]
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Update from the Field: Non-Financial Services, Employment Discrimination + The Dark Side of Sustainable Tourism
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 2 April 2012
Compiled by Chris Paci | KF16 & KF17 | Ukraine It’s been a busy week here on Kiva Stories from the Field! Most of our KF17 fellows have been in the field for two months by this point, and they’ve been drawing on their wealth of on-the-ground experience to unpack some of the more complex and [...]
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This Sporting Life
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 28 March 2012
Michael Slattery | KF17 | Togo For the past number of weeks I’ve been training with my microfinance institution’s football club, WAGES FC. Early on in my stay, I found out that most of the male loan officers I was spending my days with were members of the team. This didn’t surprise me after a certain [...]
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Update From The Field: Finding Epiphanies, Sharing Wisdom + Standing Up to Sassy Nigerian Mamas
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 19 March 2012
Compiled by Chris Paci | KF16 & KF17 | Azerbaijan The 17th class of Kiva Fellows was turned loose into the field on January 27th, nearly two months ago – and how long ago it seems! By this point, our intrepid fellows are really starting to get the hang of their placements, forming routines, powering through their [...]
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Who are these handsome devils?
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 14 March 2012
Previous to the Kiva Fellowship, I worked for the Canada Revenue Agency, Canada’s federal tax department. It was the only job I’ve ever had where I was reluctant to tell people what I did for a living. While working for the Agency carries with it a certain stigma, the job itself can be described as [...]
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Update From The Field: Inspiring Field Partners, Cultural Adjustments + Girl Scout Cookies (No Wait, That’s Not Right)
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 5 March 2012
Compiled by Chris Paci, KF16 & KF17, Azerbaijan It's the beginning of March, and by now, most of KF17 has been out in the field for several weeks. We've settled in at our field partners, gotten to know some of our new coworkers, and started to dig a little deeper into the societies of the countries we now call home.
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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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Updates from the Field: Roads, Remittances + the “Little Paris” of Togo
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 27 June 2011
Last week our internationally-scattered Kiva Fellows introduced us to some of the men and women that compose the sixty countries in which Kiva works.
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Paving the Way to the Future (Part 2): Road Construction and Its Effects on Microfinance in Togo
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 26 June 2011
By Kathrin Gerner, KF15, Togo Lomé is under construction. In fact, all of Togo is under construction. This is what I heard when I first arrived in this small West African country two weeks ago.
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Paving the Way to the Future (Part 1): Bad Roads, Transportation Costs and Microfinance in Togo
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 20 June 2011
By Kathrin Gerner, KF15, Togo It becomes apparent with every new rainfall now that the rain season has started in Togo: Roads are the arteries that carry the lifeblood of the economy. They transport goods, employees and clients, and they provide shelf space for the countless street vendors. Mostly unpaved, however, the roads of Lomé stand no chance in the face of torrential downpours. With few drains to take the water out of the city and the soil already saturated, they turn into a vast, difficult to navigate network of rivers and lakes.
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I Am Happiest When…
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 27 August 2010
I began writing this blog on a scrap piece of paper just north of the Burkinabé/Ghanaian border. I had spent my morning walking across the border carrying a 40-pound pack and subsequently spending far too much money on a taxi into the nearest town. My Kiva Fellowship had ended a week and a half earlier, and I was sitting in a hot, dirty hotel room with a concrete floor, grimy walls, and inconsistent electricity. I was desperate for entertainment.
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A Kiva Fellow’s Scrap Book
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 20 August 2010
By Leah Gage, KF 10 in Ukraine & KF11 in Togo Today is my last day as a Kiva Fellow. Kiva Fellows Class number 10 (or KF10) took me to Zaporozhye, Ukraine where I worked with Kiva’s field partner HOPE Ukraine; KF11 brought me here to Lomé, Togo, where I work with two [...]
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World Cup Reports from Kiva Fellows Around the World
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 30 June 2010
Kiva Fellows share their World Cup experiences from Mongolia, Rwanda, Mexico, Bolivia, Togo, Sri Lanka, Chile and Kyrgyzstan
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Getting Our Groove On in West Africa
Blog: Honey Service Year - 8 May 2010
Life without music would be meaningless.” - Niezsche [Taken from a marquee billboard advertising the Ghana Music Awards 2010 One night, as we were wandering through our Asylum Down neighborhood in Accra, we heard some great reggae bumping from a small shop with a corrugated metal roof. Being who we are, and feeling the ongoing inspiration of our portable hard-drive of collected music, we popped
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Lomé, Togo: 50th Anniversary
Blog: Honey Service Year - 29 April 2010
written by Nathan Protests in the street on the 50th Anniversary of Independence On the day of our arrival in Lomé, Saturday, we saw mass protests on the boulevard. Every Saturday in Lomé, at least 60,000 citizens rise in opposition to the entrenched oligarchy here and march through the streets. Nearly every weekend these protests are begun with song and dance and ended with teargas and
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Lomé, Togo: West Africa
Blog: Honey Service Year - 23 April 2010
We are lucky to have arrived just a few days before the auspicious occasion of the 50th anniversary of Togolaise independence. But, luck in this instance is a learning experience to further our understanding and impressions of Africa, to get a slight interpretation of the massive affects of 400 years of colonial rule, and to explore, for ourselves, the ways that Togo has had impacted our lives in
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The Red Notebook and the Glue That Holds the Whole Story Together
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 3 April 2010
By Taylor Akin, KF9, Togo Sleep-deprived and over-heated, I sat in front of the fan in the loan officers’ room. I had been waiting for a loan officer at the WAGES branch office in Hédzranawoé for over an hour and sat unmoving as the room buzzed with activity all around me. Loan officers ran in and out, clients sat down and stood up, phones rang and calls were made, passbooks opened and closed, pencils scratched paper, sweat stained foreheads. I looked at the loan officer sitting across the desk opposite me.
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“Do You Know How To Run?”
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 15 March 2010
On Thursday March 4th, the second Togolese presidential elections were held since the death of President Eyadéma Gnassingbé in 2005. After 38 years of uninterrupted rule, his son Faure assumed the presidency. Shortly thereafter, he held superfluous elections that resulted in a “democratic” confirmation of his leadership.
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The Case of the Faceless Lender
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 20 February 2010
Last week, I spent two mornings making the rounds of six WAGES branch offices that participate in Kiva. Accompanied by the Kiva Coordinator, I met with loan officers and branch directors to refresh their memories on the importance of transparency, clarity of photos, and detailed profile information. Most of all, I wanted to give Kiva a human face. While Kiva lenders are well aware of the person-to-person (P2P) connections Kiva aims to establish, the direction of this gaze is often one-sided.
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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.
