The people I come in contact with.
This is how Kiva works. You give a loan. The loans goes through Kiva. It goes to an microfinance institution. They give money to a lender.
I will working with a microfinance institution Guatemala City (FAPE) to help them better work with Kiva, and get more loans to those who need them. Most of what I will be doing is helping FAPE understand the way Kiva works better, and helping them to post more loans on Kiva’s websites. The barriers will be cultural, financial, temporal, and who-knows-al.
Another important job of mine is maintaining transparency. I am going to work with FAPE to help them put more information on Kiva’s website on exactly who their borrowers are. In this role, I will be meeting and interview the individual burrowers.
A social critic named David Rodman has recently written about Kiva, critisizing its transparency. Among his points, many of which I take issue with, he takes aim at the Kiva Fellows program and the process of interviewing borrowers: Read the rest of this entry »
