My Kiva Portfolio

Since learning about Kiva I have made 15 loans totaling $375 to people or groups in Honduras, Kenya, Peru, The Philippines, Uganda, Paraguay, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Ecuador. The loans have been for Education (almost 50%), Agriculture, Food, Retail, Services, and Health.
https://www.kiva.org/

2 New Kiva Loans

My daughter sent me a gift certificate to Kiva for Mother's Day. Kiva is a non-profit that loans money to people and institutions who have little or no access to traditional banking systems. I like Kiva because you can pick the area of the world you want to help, the sector, such as education or agriculture, and any other attributes such as green, fair trade, or water and sanitation. When the loan is re-paid you can choose another borrower.

Here are the 2 loans I choose. The photos and descriptions are from the Kiva website.


Greetings from Uganda! This is Godfrey. He is the Head Teacher of Timuna S. School, a mixed school in the rural area of Nakaseke with 350 students. Timuna S. School has requested a loan to cover the cost of installing and maintaining a UV water filtration system to provide clean drinking water for its students.
The school does not currently have access to consistent clean drinking water and therefore has to spend a considerable portion of its budget on firewood, which is used to boil water for the children. Installing a water filtration system will therefore save the school money in the long-term as the cost of firewood will be reduced. The loan will enable the school to purchase a UV water treatment system with a 1,000 liter tank, which will be big enough to store clean drinking water for the students every day.
Timuna S. School will repay their loan from their school fees, which they collect each term. Godfrey ultimately hopes that having access to safe drinking water will improve his student’s concentration and attendance by reducing the number of children that fall sick from water-borne diseases as well as increase the number of students coming to the school.



Erlyn is a 23 year old, young man who lives in the city of Tegucigalpa. He currently lives alone as his family lives in his birth town, outside the city limits. He is studying medicine and is in the last years of his program. With great effort he has been able to reach his goal.

He comes from a close knit, very united and very hardworking family, made up of his mother and his ten year old brother. From a very young age they faced very difficult situations as they lost their father to a terminal illness. This required Erlyn to work and fight for his family. Today his situation has worsened, due to the demands his university studies place on his time.

His mother is a dressmaker, but due to health issues cannot work. She has inspired him to continue on this long road. Erlyn is a respectful, responsible young man. He is enterprising and enthusiastic, and motivated by a desire to succeed in order to reach his academic goals. This will help his younger brother in the future to fight for his own dreams, as Erlyn plans to support him in his studies.

Erlyn wants to contribute to the development of his country through the health field, offering his talent to others and his family, by providing better conditions of life, health, food and education, leading to a more prosperous life and success. Erlyn has been marked by the difficult stages illness has caused his family. One of these took the life of his father, and caused his mother to suffer. Little by little she recovered her faith and hope in both the love of God and the love of her children, in order to continue being the pillar of her family.

Erlyn's future goals are to work, to strive to move his family forward, to provide his mother the care she needs, and to provide his brother the education he deserves.
His mother,the person who is very proud of her son and with a wish to always grow, she is Francisca and accompanies Erlyn in the profile picture.

A Kiva Loan to John's Group in Kenya

From the Kiva website:

"John is 45 years old and has 6 children. He has been a farmer for more than 20 years and is always said to be a very experienced farmer. Even though John is the only one featured in the above picture, he is actually representing his group formed by 10 farmers in Chwele District, Kenya.

John started working alongside One Acre Fund a few years ago, in 2010, and decided to do so because he wanted to have access to quality training and acquire new farming methods. Since then, he has seen his life improve; especially in the sense that he has learnt a lot from farming trainings ever since. This year he decided to represent his group because he wanted to help more farmers.

John’s Group will receive farming inputs to plant a total of 4.25 acres of land. Additionally, some of the farmers in the group will be purchasing a solar light so, with this loan, the group will also receive a total of 3 solar lights. A portion of John's Group's $525 loan helps a member to buy cost efficient seeds and fertilizer for the coming harvesting season."

A Kiva Loan to Nelson in Honduras

From the Kiva website:
"Nelson is married and has two daughters. He works different jobs to support the needs of his family. The production of 100% organic coffee and vegetables is his main source of income.
Nelson dreams of being able to give his daughters the best opportunities in life, especially for them to have a good education. Currently, organic passion fruit production is becoming more popular in the region; the fruit is sold through Colmena, of which Nelson is a member. Passion fruit is a novel crop since this area has the appropriate conditions to farm it without any problems.
Nelson is requesting a loan to plant 0.6 hectares (roughly 1.5 acres) of organic passion fruit under the technical supervision of Colmena. With the profit from the production, he wants to improve his family's quality of life and continuing working to accumulate assets for his children's inheritance. A loan helps Nelson purchase passion fruit plants, posts, an irrigation system, and pay for labor on his organic passion fruit farm."

This Kiva loan is in honor of my mother's birthday:
"Grigor lives with his nice family in Dilijan city, which is in the Tavush region. Grigor says that he greatly enjoyed his two previous deals with Kiva and hopes for the third one. He hopes that Kiva lenders will be so kind again to support him in his request with the loan amount.
Grigor works at the computer office, and there he repairs computers and printing machines. His wife also works there as a manager. Grigor has two pretty daughters; the elder already graduated from a state university, and she works at the insurance company. The smallest daughter is still a student at the Yerevan State University, at the faculty of Romano and Germanic languages. She studies at the paid division and Grigor would like to solve the problem of tuition fee repayment again with the help of Kiva lenders.
This loan of 450,000 Armenian drams he seeks as he must pay his smallest daughter’s tuition fee."

Clean Water for Kenya

"Charles is 48 years old, has 8 children, and lives in Aora Chuodho B village in Ndhiwa sub county, Kenya. Charles works as a subsistence farmer for a living. His community of Aora Chuodho B village does not have access to clean water. The water that is used for drinking and cooking is easily contaminated with bacteria that can cause diarrhea and other water-borne diseases. Charles is a friendly member of the community, and has been elected Promoter by his village to help its members obtain safe drinking water.
As a volunteer Promoter, Charles represents the community on Kiva’s website and educates the community on how to protect their families from unsafe drinking water by using a chlorine dispenser system. Charles and 4 other promoters in his community, namely Carolyn, Mary, Olivia and Ruth, need a loan to cover the costs of installing and maintaining chlorine dispensers at the water sources in the area. Charles wants to be a promoter because he believes that the chlorine will kill germs in water, thus making it safe to drink.
This loan is part of Evidence Action’s Dispensers for Safe Water program, providing rural communities with access to safe drinking water by installing chlorine dispensers where people collect water. The dispensers enable community members to treat their water with chlorine to make it safe to drink."
EvidenceAction

A Kiva Loan to Alvin in the Philippines

From the Kiva website: "Julieta, 42, is from Dingalan, Aurora (Philippines). She is married and blessed with one son, Alvin. Even with only one child, Julieta and her husband find it difficult to support him financially because they are low-income. Julieta wants to borrow a PHP 200,000 education loan from Kiva lenders to pay for her son's tuition fees. Alvin is earning a B.S. in electrical engineering. Alvin wants to finish college in order to achieve personal success and help his parents out of poverty."

A Kiva Loan to Marlene of Paraguay

From Kiva:
"Marlene is from the city of Villarrica. Like many young people, she is making sacrifices in order to get ahead and overcome. She is studying nursing, which she wants to use to help other people with their health which is very important. She says that her family inspires her to continue striving to grow. Marlene dreams to being able to graduate as a nurse so that she can be useful through her profession, not only to herself, but also to society through her knowledge. She says she's been striving a lot, and the loan she took out earlier was to be able to pay the fees for her career. She's seeking this loan to be able to invest again in the fees for her profession, and thus be able to continue striving and working."

The Gift That Keeps on Giving

I have been receiving payments on my loans that I made to various people and organizations through Kiva. $25.00 is the minimum needed to make another loan so when I had that much in my account I decided to make another loan and choose Jose Motino Guillermo.
Here is his story:
"Young Jose Motino is 24 years old and lives with his parents in the Honduras section of the city of Tegucigalpa. He is about to finish his university studies where he expects to earn a degree in marketing. Jose Guillermo is thought of as a leader, and a person who is determined and capable of reaching his goals.
His main motivation for continuing his studies is to achieve personal and professional success, serving as an example for his family to follow. He believes that the best way to contribute to the development of his country is to always think and act in a totally positive way, looking for solutions to problems that currently pose a series of obstacles for many people.
Jose Guillermo is involved in activities that evaluate companies' decision making processes on daily situations and states that not all companies react
favorably. He wants to support education; this is very important to Jose because there are young people who want to better themselves, but today economic factors often get in the way of their ability to achieve their goals. He hopes to attain success by becoming a professional, thus being able to provide a better education for his children."

Kiva

Thanks to a gift from my daughter for my birthday I was able to choose another person to help through Kiva.
Here is the person I choose and his story:


"Cesar’s parents are separated. He currently lives with his mother and his younger brother. They do not have any type of support from their father. His mother works in the area of public cleaning in the municipality where she lives. Her salary barely covers the household food expenses. Therefore, Cesar would not be able to go to school without the support of the Kiva lenders.

Cesar would be the first in his family to take higher education courses. Doing so would be a great achievement for him and for his whole family. He wishes to be a great professional and to work in order to be able to help his family. He will be an example for his younger brother, and he will help him to be able to follow his footsteps in the future.

Cesar is grateful to the Kiva lenders for all of the support they provide him with so that he is able to fulfill his dream of going to school and to soon become a successful professional.

He believes that the support that each Kiva lender provides is a great show of generosity and of love for their fellow man. It causes a large, positive ripple effect in the development of those most in need."

Best Mother's Day Gift

My daughter sent me the most amazing Mother's Day gift, a gift certificate for Kiva, a non profit that lends money to low-income entrepreneurs and students. I choose 4 different people/groups loaning each 25.00
The first was to a person in El Salvador who sells fruits and vegetables. The second was to a group in Ecuador called Los Intocables to help purchase a sewing machine. The third was to Zamiq in Azerbaijan to help with his fruit orchard. The last was to Isabel Jose in Nicaragua to help with his free trade coffee farm. After I did that I felt bad because I had completely ignored Africa so I picked another recipient Anastasia from Kisauni, Kenya who operates a retail shop selling wheat, flour and rice.
I did a blog about Kiva a long time ago and had meant to donate something but I'm not sure if I ever did. Here is a link to their website http://www.kiva.org/

This is a picture of Los Intocables.

Kiva

I discovered the website Kiva.org while reading a book just published by Bill Clinton. Here is a description of the program, known as microcredit, from their website: "Kiva lets you connect with and loan money to unique small businesses in the developing world. By choosing a business on Kiva.org, you can "sponsor a business" and help the world's working poor make great strides towards economic independence. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates from the business you've sponsored. As loans are repaid, you get your loan money back." This idea comes from Bangladeshi banker and economist Muhammad Yunus who founded the Grameen Bank which loans small amounts of money to enterpreneurs too poor to qualify for traditional bank loans. He won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in 2006.
I like this program because you can give a small amount of money, as little as $25.00, and you can choose the receipient.
Please check out their website at http://www.kiva.org/
For more ideas on giving I highly recommend the new book by Bill Clinton: Giving: how each of us can change the world.
HCPL has many copies of the book and the audiobook.