“I’m creative, I'm courageous, and I’m strong.”
These are the words of Alix, a 20-year-old student whose family left their home in Burundi in 2014 and became refugees in Rwanda. Her parents inspired her to pursue a college degree, and she received a laptop loan from Kiva lenders for her undergraduate studies. Alix sees the loan...
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Catherine successfully started and grew a farming business with the help of a Kiva loan to purchase cows and goats. She now sells milk, and uses the manure from the animals to improve yields on her coffee crops.
The income from her business has brought stability to her life and has allowed her to put her children in private school She...
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An exciting new partnership between Kiva, Sierra Leone and U.N. agencies is set to bring a nationwide digital identification system to the people of Sierra Leone that is designed to provide citizens with formal identity and control over their own credit information.
Sierra Leone’s President Julius Maada Bio announced the initiative, which could be a promising new model for global...
When Samira and her family fled the violence of the civil war in Syria for Lebanon, they thought they would be back in their own home within months, with enough time to get the kids enrolled in the next school session.
“We didn’t bring anything from our home, except for some clothes because we thought we would be back in 2 months,” said Samira. Seven years later, the family...
The Kiva community is rallying to raise $1 million in loans for refugees and internally displaced people by World Refugee Day, June 20.
Samah and Ahlam are the kind of friends that scoop up each other’s children and sooth them without batting an eye, as if they are their own.
Samah and Ahlam are also successful business partners who have more than tripled their monthly income since starting a clothes resale venture together and taking out a Kiva loan to build their inventory.
... Continue Reading >>Phyllis’ life did not turn out the way she imagined it would.
She never expected to get divorced, or be a single mother. She never expected to start her own business or to find the strength within to go up against male competitors. Most of all, she never expected she would experience domestic abuse at the hands of someone she loved.
But for years, that was her reality. Phyllis’ ex-husband often beat her so...
For just a moment, try to ignore those news alerts on your phone. Take a deep breath and join us in the Kiva universe–a kind and compassionate corner of the internet (some may say parallel dimension) where people help each other improve their lives, every day. Here in the Kiva universe millions of people carry out small acts of kindness all the time.
This year, those small acts...
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Ernestina, an artisan in Ghana, is dressed to the nines for company but doesn’t hesitate for a moment to climb into her carving workshop and show us how it’s done.
When she carves it’s a full body effort. She positions herself on a tree stump, across from her material. She uses her legs, clad in beautiful orange embellished pants, to pin the wood in place and begins chiseling, wood chips flying. She kicks off her shoes for better traction.
It’s mesmerizing to see how quickly the wood changes from...
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