Cocoa is known as the main cash crop in Ghana - but cashews will soon surpass cocoa exports, Samuel Gyasi told me during my 6-month Kiva fellowship in Ghana. Samuel works for Advans Ghana, Kiva's Field Partner in the region. The organization provides microfinancing to micro, small and medium-sized businesses with an emphasis on agriculture.
I spent the first 2 months of my fellowship working with Samuel and Advans Ghana. On this particular day, we left the chaos of Accra for the rural beauty and peace of the Volta Region to introduce local farmers in Heikope...
Stories tagged with Kiva Fellow
Like so many others in Ghana, Abigail got a loan for her provisions shop. Like so many others, she wanted to buy products that increased her profit so she could make more money. She was trying to save enough money to enroll in university. Okay, so the last part is a bit different. But that’s just one of the many qualities that make Abigail unique.
Abigail's story involves broken homes, dreams of helping kids, perseverance, faith and unparalleled determination.
Continue Reading >>
Everyone who becomes a Kiva borrower through iDE Ghana’s Sama Sama Toilet program wants to buy a toilet structure - the very first toilet to ever grace their home. Amazingly, 100% of these borrowers have gotten funded by Kiva lenders, a fantastic statistic!
But have you ever given any thought to how the structure gets there? It isn’t magic, someone has to build it. The behind-the-scenes success of Sama Sama Toilet is its Toilet Business Owner program, or TBO. As the new-on-the-ground Kiva Fellow, I got to visit three TBOs today. TBOs are recruited early on in...
Continue Reading >>
I left the Advans Ghana's (Kiva's Field Partner) office, with Kofi, the Advans Loan Officer, to meet the nearest potential Kiva borrower, Elizabeth.
For the first leg of our journey, we had to take three different tro-tros, minibus share taxis, and we eventually ended up at a busy intersection with market stalls all around. Now the exciting and unexpected part of the trip began – getting on a motorcycle for the last 6 kilometers to Elizabeth's village.
I started my fellowship in Indonesia, a vast archipelago known for its volcanoes and dreamy white sand beaches. However, with over a quarter billion people from different ethnic groups, Indonesia is also a dense melting pot and has the largest economy in Southeast Asia.
Yet, despite its rapid economic growth, the country also faces enormous challenges.
Indonesia's GDP per capita is a...
Never has the saying, ‘If you educate a man you educate an individual, but if you educate a woman you educate a nation,’ resonated more with me. Before starting my fellowship with Kiva, I always wondered why most lenders loan money to women rather than men. However, the experience of visiting borrowers all over Uganda during this fellowship has given me a totally different perspective, as I’ve now been able to see and experience first-hand how key women are to development....
Continue Reading >>Their impressive history lasts for thousands of years. As a Kiva... Continue Reading >>
Coffee options in Monrovia are limited. Nescafe is typically the go-to option. Coffee grounds are sold at supermarkets, but they don't come cheap. There is one store with local Liberian beans, but then you have to grind your beans before making coffee. Who has time for that?
... Continue Reading >>
Coming into my fellowship, I was quite aware of some of the challenges of running microfinance operations. I knew that interest rates from certain microfinance institutions can be too high for borrowers to sustain repayments and that it takes a lot of manpower to disburse loans, perform loan assessments, and conduct verifications. But I only...
Continue Reading >>
I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole and ended up in the wonderful world of Maputo, Mozambique. Forgetting my old routine and relearning the spicy, Mozambican way of things.
I was on my first placement in Brazil when I found out I would be going to Mozambique. I began to eagerly dream about my future life in Africa, a new continent for...