Blog posts tagged with innovation

Feb 2, 2013 Kiva HQ KV
Catalytic Loans: How Kiva is pushing boundaries to make loans do more By Michelle Kreger
When we think about impact at Kiva, the first thing that comes to mind is the effect loans have on borrowers’ lives. From a shopkeeper in Rwanda paying back her loan successfully to a farmer in Nicaragua putting his kids through school, it’s clear that Kiva loans are changing lives each and every day.

Of course none of this would be possible without our 170+ field partners around the world. So when it comes to reaching even more borrowers with the right loans and services, we also need to enable change at the partner level. How do we plan to do this?

... Continue Reading >
Oct 10, 2012 Kiva HQ KV
Kiva Innovations: Accelerator programs for social entrepreneurs By Rebekah Chang
Lately, it seems like everyone has caught the startup bug. With constant news of billion dollar companies being founded by college students, the latest iteration of the American Dream has yielded a fresh crop of entrepreneurs.

Scribd, Reddit, Airbnb, Dropbox – what do all of these innovative startups have in common? They all got off the ground with help from programs called "seed accelerators," in this case one in particular: Y Combinator.

Over the past 6 years, accelerator programs have emerged across the country to incubate cutting-edge technologies... Continue Reading >
Jul 7, 2012 Kiva HQ KV
Kiva Innovations: Lending to get life-changing products into the right hands By Ian Matthews
In 1939, two Stanford graduates named Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard built an audio oscillator in their Palo Alto garage. They sold eight of these electronic sound testers to Walt Disney Studios for $5,000. With the money they started Hewlett-Packard, a.ka. HP. They also gave birth to Silicon Valley.

Two guys in a garage tinkering away, taking risks, working ungodly hours -- it’s an image that has become symbolic of startups everywhere. Unfortunately, it’s also changed the way people think of startups -- overshadowing small business efforts made by nonprofits,... Continue Reading >