Last week, a few local students came over to my apartment to share in the joy of cooking their favorite Kenyan dishes. While I tried my best to help, it was clear early in... Continue Reading >>
Stories tagged with blogsherpa
Last week, a few local students came over to my apartment to share in the joy of cooking their favorite Kenyan dishes. While I tried my best to help, it was clear early in... Continue Reading >>
Ever since I found out I was accepted to the Kiva Fellows program, I've felt very fortunate. Fortunate to volunteer with an organization that does incredible work in the mission to alleviate poverty. Fortunate to be based in Hanoi, Vietnam, one of my top choices for country placement. Fortunate to spend three weeks in Cambodia (prior to Vietnam) in order to interview actual borrowers and hear about the...
Continue Reading >>It’s been 2 weeks since my arrival in Azerbaijan for my Kiva Fellowship and every day I grow more confused.
Serving in Azerbaijan is a very different experience from the typical Kiva Fellow placement. The scenes here of the capital, Baku, aren’t the stereotypical poverty we envision in Africa or south Asia. By World Bank figures, Azerbaijan is wealthier than more than 54% of the world’s countries; amongst Kiva’s portfolio countries (which include the U.S., Israel, and Mexico... Continue Reading >>
Car engines roar as they try to make it up some of the hills. Only the most skilled manual transmission drivers can make it 50 Kigali-miles without stalling out. Even automatic transmission cars tend to stall on hills like these. At first, I wondered to myself why this... Continue Reading >>
By Rose Larsen, KF19 Colombia, with excerpts provided by Wesley Schrock, KF19 Honduras, and Luan Nio, KF18 Nicaragua/KF19 United States
Loan officers are the hidden heroes behind the Kiva model.
Lenders, borrowers, Kiva staff and Kiva fellows all show their beautiful faces somewhere on Kiva.org, and while Kiva’s field partners have profiles of their own, there is little explanation or clarity behind who actually, physically, goes to the clients’ businesses, evaluates their requests, delivers loans and picks up repayments (hint: it’s loan officers!)....
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On the plane to Kigali for my Kiva Fellowship at Urwego Opportunity International, I realise that my knowledge of Rwanda, the country of a thousand hills, is limited to the famous mountain gorillas and the tragic history of genocide in 1994.
I have little idea of what the people and the country will be like. Wary of the fact that everyone over 19 years old must have a significant story, I approach the city and its people with cautious optimism. I should not have been worried. Everywhere I go, gracious, smiling and incredibly polite people...
For the past four months, I have been serving as a Kiva Zip Fellow in Denver, Colorado. As a fellow in the US I was required to work independently without the comfort of a home office or co-workers. The Zip fellowship is in and of itself, very entrepreneurial. First came research, then networking, then meetings, then events, then more networking. I’ve met so many fascinating people and have come to know so many amazing organizations doing crucial work in my own backyard.
The work of one organization in particular has really resonated with me...
Continue Reading >>Rose Larsen | KF19 | Colombia
After traveling for almost a month over Christmas holidays, I was struggling to figure out why I was so happy to be back “home” in Barranquilla, the hot, humid, chaotic city on the Caribbean coast of Colombia that I’ve been living in for the past 4 months. I had just visited places of incredible beauty like:
Montezuma, Costa Rica
Isla Ometepe, Nicaragua
and Medellin, Colombia.
But as much fun as I had, none of these places measured up.
Then I read the news and everything made sense.
... Continue Reading >>0041.jpgw300Squished amid the forcibly vertical crowd of 45 some odd people in a Senegalese bus made for “15 maximum!” (or so the sign read…), arms glued to my sides and modeling a facial expression of utter discomfort, I overheard a jarring statistic shared in conversation between my neighbors: 25% of Senegal’s population is living in .3% of the land in Dakar.
The mind visual...
Continue Reading >>By Irene Fung | KF19 | India
Water and Sanitation may not be the first issue that people associate with Kiva. Entrepreneurs scoop up most of the headlines in micro-finance, but when it comes to alleviating poverty, other less publicized loan products are equally important. In fact, Kiva is committed to increasing peoples’ access to financial services to facilitate the development of water and sanitation, a key development challenge.
India has felt this challenge acutely with 67% of the rural households lacking any access to sanitation facilities. In Odisha, India...
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