Stories tagged with microfinance
Some of you have may lend to women borrowers gathered in groups called "Village Bank", or "Banc Villageois" in French, the following is the story of this system in Senegal.
In 1984, in a plane going to La Paz, John Hatch outlined a project in which poor people gathered in a group were directly in charge of their financial service program. The main idea was to provide small loan to poorest families, especially women, for helping them to start small businesses. Such as what Grameen Bank was already doing in Bangladesh.
Village Banking has been... Continue Reading >>
Pamhidzayi (Pamhi) Mhongera leads all new and existing projects at the MicroKing microfinance institution in Harare, Zimbabwe. As part of her role, she oversees the Kiva program under which Zimbabwean entrepreneurs are given the opportunity to work their way up the socioeconomic ladder.
However Pamhi’s positive impact on her community extends beyond her daily work. She and her husband, Mustafa, launched...
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Mary, far left, with the Sisal Sisters borrower group in Kakuyuni, near Tala, Kenya
The second day I was in Kenya I had the good fortune to spend the day with KADET staff profiling the top loan officer at the agency, Mary Ngenya, who works in the Tala region. Mary is considered THE BEST of approximately 80 loan officers in the entire organization which has offices all over Kenya; she manages one of the largest loan portfolios in the organization and in the six years since she’s been with KADET, her...
Dimitri Zakharov | KF20 | Azerbaijan
Something big is happening here – and you don’t know anything about it.As I explained in my last post, Azerbaijan has amassed great wealth due to its reserves of oil. It is the third largest oil producing country out of the CIS nations and the government oil fund, Sofaz, currently sits on $33.9 billion. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Azerbaijan took on a staggering initiative of modernization in order to shed its Soviet past and remake its own Azeri identity.
The frontline of... Continue Reading >>
Come with me on a journey to northern Albania, an area known for legendary hospitality, ancient citadels, and blood feuds. In many villages in the north the people are not governed by 21st...
Continue Reading >>So much of what we read and hear about the successes of... Continue Reading >>
MEET JESSIE GOLDENBERG: entrepreneur, New Yorker, and - as of today, Feb 25, 2013 - Kiva Zip’s 150th crowd-funded startup in the US.
Jessie is a smart, resourceful, double-shift working Brooklynite and NYU graduate. Her 6 month old business idea - turning a used 14-footer truck into a mobile fashion boutique that tours festivals, markets and college campuses called NOMAD - is already revenue-generating. So it begs the question: why did someone like Jessie...
Continue Reading >>Meet Henry Bartram,
A career private equity professional in London who, about a decade ago, gave up his suit and tie to manage the British Red Cross response in Aceh, Indonesia after the December 2004 tsunami.
This experience led him to more social impact opportunities and ultimately to him becoming a Kiva Fellow. Henry was a member a KF15 and KF16, serving in Liberia and...
Continue Reading >>Keith Baillie | KF19 | Philippines
Part I: Construction of a New Community
Following the Sendong typhoon, many Cagayan de Oro residents were displaced. I visited one of the resettlement villages, Xavier Ecoville. Flood victims are still currently living in temporary wooden accommodation built by agencies like Habitat for Humanity.
Temporary housing:
But new permanent housing is being constructed, with the philosophy “We are not just building houses, we...
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