Drive an hour north-west from Nairobi, Kenya, and you’ll come to the famous Hell’s Gate National Park and the beautiful town of Naivasha. This lakeside retreat was the setting for the first-ever Kiva Labs Innovation Conference, which brought together  nearly 100 leaders from Kiva’s African Field Partners.

Part of the larger Kiva Labs program, a 5-year initiative in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation, the KLIC conference’s goal was to facilitate intra-organizational learning and innovation. 

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For the past half-century, Colombia has been in the middle of armed conflict. Waged mostly in rural areas and the remote towns and villages that dot the country’s borders, the war between government forces and armed opposition groups—led by Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, or FARC—has left thousands of fighters and civilians dead, and more than 7 million Colombian people displaced from their homes.

This latter population constitutes the second largest group of internally displaced people (IDPs) in a single country in the world, measuring only...

Since opening her street corner bakery in Oakland, Calif., in late 2017, Reem Assil has been busy. Assil took out a $25,000 Kiva loan to invest in equipment and inventory for her first restaurant, Reem's California, which serves up Arab bread. It also acts as an anchor in the Fruitvale neighborhood, providing good jobs for those with barriers to employment, delicious nourishing food and a healthy dose of social justice. The restaurant has received glowing media attention and garnered awards across the country, including a Best Chef nod from the James Beard Foundation for Assil herself....

On April 22, the international community celebrated Earth Day. To commemorate the holiday at Kiva, we published 2 stories about loan types that go to populations grappling with global climate change. The first story concerned agricultural loans, while the other tackled loans for clean water and sanitation...