This is our 28th KIVA loan!
That means our KIVA account, which currently has $207, has managed to fund $700 of loans (because as the money comes in we relend it).
Tracey chose to help Rose from Uganda stock her shop with sugar, salt, soap and cooking oil. We knew Tracey had found her loan when she got teary. Here’s Rose’s KIVA application:
“Rose lives in Kampala, Uganda. She is married and has eight children, four of whom are in school. She also takes care of additional family members (Old parents). Rose has a retail shop business. She has been in this business for 10 years and she works seven days out of every week. Rose sells her products in a shop, by means of retail. Rose has requested a loan of 1,500.000 Ugandan Shillings from MCDT SACCO, which she will use to buy more bags of sugar, cartons of salt, boxes of soap and jerrycans of cooking oil. The main business challenge(s) for Rose include thieves and transportation. Her goals and aspirations for her business are to start selling at wholesale and own a fully stocked shop. Rose lives in a home that she rents. She has access to electricity and piped water. Her major monthly expenses include school fees, rent and feeding the family.”
Eight children plus looking after aged family members – we were never going past Rose.
“How do they do it?” Tracey asked me. “We think we struggle! We’ve got nothing to complain about.”
It’s so true. We love helping people out a little with our $25 loans each month. We love it even more if, as with this loan, it’s entirely funded on repayments from our previous loans.
When not typing away over here and checking his stats every two minutes,
Bruce Devereaux hangs out at his ‘BIG FAMILY little income’ Facebook Page.
’raising a family on little more than laughs’
This is an interesting article http://blogs.cgdev.org/open_book/2009/10/kiva-is-not-quite-what-it-seems.php
Personally I think KIVA is very transparent in it’s operation and accountability. They don’t skim money from the money we loan, their offices run from separate donations specific to their running costs. Similar topics about pre-payment of loans have been discussed on KIVA itself (I participated in one with other members of the Australia team). Some people were unaware the loans were funded before we loaned them our money and felt in some way ripped off – but most knew and understood the reasons the loans are handled the way they are and the benefits to the very people we’re all trying to help. In the end the points which settled the discussion were: a) without our money, the loans wouldn’t happen b) if the loan defaults, we wear the loss. Therefore, no matter how you look at it, they’re our individual loans to feel good about 🙂
And thank you for posting, Suzanne. A very interesting and informative article. On the whole, positive I think 🙂 Encouraging people to help others with their time or dollars is hard. I saw a telly special where they tore strips off those companies who send young people into the streets to have passersby sign up for monthly direct debits – something like 95% of what was raised in first year didn’t make it to the charity, it went to company raising the money. I’ll stick with KIVA.
I agree Bruce, the article wasn’t negative at all in my view, it just explains how things work. I like that 🙂
hey bruce its jane… im enjoying your blog… Im up to my 10th kiva loan now.hope you are all well…:o}
Fantastic Jane! I look forward to the 15th every single month so we lend out the repayments 🙂 I’m sure you’re exactly the same. If you think some friends might like to try Kiva, they have free trials every now and then. There’s one on now actually.