By Kate Bennett (KF15)

Small business owners in Ecuador, like Marcia Suqui in the video above, can use their microloans to move forward with their businesses and improve their quality of life. After all, this is the idea driving Kiva- that small loans can change lives. But not all small loans can improve a business owner’s standing, because the darker side...

By Anne Conlin, KF15, Indonesia

In a past blog post, I discussed how loans from Kiva’s partner Mitra Usaha Kecil (MUK) in rural West Bali, Indonesia are helping women expand the scale of their pig breeding businesses.  MUK’s Pig Breeder Group Loan enables women who have long casually raised one pig in their yard to take small loans of 1 – 2.5M IDR ($117 – $263) to formalize their business and raise additional pigs.  As part of...

Faith Garlington, KF15
GHAPE (Grounded and Holistic Approach to People’s Empowerment)

Bamenda, Cameroon

In the United States, we see countless images meant to represent poverty in Africa that focus on civil unrest, starving children, HIV/AIDS, and other diseases. The images come from our media, our government, even charities and NGOs working to fight the affects of poverty. But...

By Casey Cline, KF 15, Nicaragua

Leaving behind a developed country that is still trying to deal with the effects of its credit-obsessed culture, I was very interested in seeing first-hand what type of relationship with credit I would find in the developing world. Most would agree that Nicaragua has a recent history marked by political instability, and partially as a result, has an economy that has experienced years of slow (and often negative) growth. As might be expected, the presence of microfinance here is essential to the stagnant economy, providing small business...