After finishing my Kiva fellowship with EDAPROSPO last week, I moved out of Lima and into the province of Junín in the sierras of Peru. My time with Microfinanzas PRISMA is quite short and so I’ve engaged in a whirlwind tour of meeting entrepreneurs, collecting their stories, and posting journal updates. As the PRISMA office in Tarma services the entire northern half of Junín province, the clients are very spread out and thus long hours are a given. The following video is a snapshot of my day on Wednesday, December 17th, 2008. I had to split it into two parts because the upload...
Continue Reading >>Fellows Blog Posts by joshtoro
Mrs. Rosario Roca runs a bodega in the front of her house on a quiet street in Comas, a northern suburb of Lima, Peru. After giving an EDAPROSPO loan officer and I Inka Colas (a yellow soda with the taste of bubble-gum, widely considered the national drink of Peru [nonalcoholic, the alcoholic distinction belongs to the Pisco Sour]), Mrs. Roca gave us a snapshot of what it meant to be a small business owner and resident of her neighborhood in Comas. The hospitality gave it away.
She has spent four years receiving loans from EDAPROSPO and...
With 7 weeks past and 8 weeks to go, my Kiva Fellowship is moving right along. As my colleagues around the world, from Cambodia to Uganda to Peru can attest, much of the Kiva Fellow’s life is spent in motion. Already I have had two days where the number of hours spent on buses to number of clients interviewed, if imagined as a see-saw, would make for one very boring recess hanging on a plank suspended in the air. But if my last post dealt with my feelings on productivity (see “Buses and Productivity“), now I am considering the more general...
Continue Reading >>My week has been one of experiencing the meaning of the word ‘between’ (Not to be confused with the town of Between, GA which lies exactly between my parent’s house in Atlanta and my most recent house in Athens). I have experienced and relished the state of being between, which I have conveniently organized into paragraph form for you. Yes, you.
The first state of between was geographical: between Kiva training in San Francisco and the start of my Kiva Fellowship in Peru and Bolivia. I am one of the first in the 6thClass of Kiva Fellows to go...
Continue Reading >>That should be the sign hanging underneath every blog because, really, blogs are like an open invitation to read your diary.
Lucky for me, my diary is written to an imaginary audience populated by people just like you.
Welcome. Welcome to my first post as a Kiva Fellow. I hope that these first few sentences prove enticing enough to read to the middle and even the end of this entry.
This fall I will be going to Peru and later Bolivia to help act as a bridge between the Kiva borrowers from EDAPROSPO and Emprender (respectively) and their Kiva lenders around the world...
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