If you follow me via @Anecdoted on Twitter, you’ll notice that I share quite a few articles criticizing microfinance, far more than ones that praise. Despite this evidence to the contrary, I do believe that microfinance “works” – but not in the “silver bullet” transformative way that most people often associate with microfinance and poverty alleviation.
As a Kiva Fellow, I’ve seen the successes. I’ve visited businesses and interviewed clients who have succeeded because of microfinance. These borrowers were able to grow their businesses that not only provide the owners with a comfortable living, but also provide additional livelihoods for hired employees. Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee and Esther Duflo of M.I.T, and Dean Karlan of Yale wrote in their New York Times op-ed “The Role of Microfinance,” microcredit is generally viewed as either “transformative” successes, or “ruinous” failures. Having seen the former, I believe that much of the latter is caused by over-high expectations – that poor people all over the world would be lifted out of poverty through lending. When recent research failed to support this concept of global poverty alleviation, people started to lose faith in microfinance.
I can’t think of a better way to kick off the new year than watching this TED talk by author Elizabeth Gilbert, on “Nurturing Creativity.” Eat Pray Love is simply one of my favorite books of all time, and an inspiration. And it turned out that her TED talk was, in a way, a bridge between Eat Pray Love and her upcoming book Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace With Marriage (which I’m highly anticipating, or as Gilbert wryly noted, perhaps over-anticipating) as she talked about the “freakish success” that Eat Pray Love was and the external pressures that not just herself, but all creative individuals are under to to constantly pump out works of genius. In searching for a way to create a healthier distance between artists and the darker, often destructive side of creativity (“manic depression,” “overinflated egos,” etc.) Gilbert looked to history and discovered a different working theory about “genius” that is humble, yet divine.
Merry Christmas! This holiday season Kiva Fellows are celebrating Christmas all over the world, in all sorts of different ways. Whether it be traveling, feasting, or working hard to bring you some additional Kiva magic over the holidays, it’s safe to say we’re all thankful to be serving as Kiva Fellows and glad to have found a wonderful community in Kiva.
We wanted to share what Christmas is like for KF9ers out in the field and around the world. So enjoy – and happy holidays!
In no particular order:
Nicki Goh, KF9 Senegal
This coming weekend, the Senegalese have a 4 day weekend with both Christian and Islamic holidays straddling the weekend. I will make the most of the time off work to visit the Sine-Saloum Delta on the Atlantic coast of Senegal – an area where my MFI SEM’s work is extremely important to ecovillagers. The delta is an area of immense natural beauty which is sadly at risk of desertification and where there is a high level of unemployment. This time I will be on vacation but I hope to return there at a later date to meet some of the borrowers for myself. Happy holidays to you all – whatever your religion!
Ok, I admit that I mainly wanted to practice writing a “catchy” title for this post. I’m sure that people who know me are thinking something along the lines of “but you’re not even Christian!” And I’m not in the U.S. right now either. But I did just read a fantastic TIME article about how Christian church groups are standing up against the insane commercialization of Christmas in the States, offering some proof that this title might not be as outrageous as it appeared at first glance.
I guess it was just a matter of time before I did the obligatory food post about all the interesting dishes that I’ve been trying in the Philippines. Unfortunately what prompted me to type up this post was a string of eating mishaps, of sorts. On Tuesday a nearby barangay (or village) had a fiesta in celebration of its patron saint. As my co-worker informed me, this fiesta was for the Immaculate Conception, celebrating “the conception of the Virgin Mary without any stain of original sin.” Which was a tad hard for me to wrap my mind around initially because it’s celebrating an event as opposed to an actual saint, but I guess this barangay fiesta is the local equivalent of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.
At any decent celebration, party, or fiesta in the Philippines there will always be lechon baboy, or roasted pig. The first time I had it was in Cebu, where it’s a local specialty. I had met up with fellow KF9er Ed Coambs one weekend and made a point to try out lechon baboy, since all my HSPFI co-workers kept telling me that Cebu has the best lechon baboy in the Philippines. We ended up getting a tame, chopped-up version in a restaurant recommended on Wikitravel. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t amazing either. I much preferred lechon manok, or roasted chicken. And to be honest, on that Cebu trip Ed and I gravitated towards American comfort foods. Like McDonald’s and pancakes.
Every time I come back from the field, I’m weighed down by videos, photos, barely legible notebook scribbles. Stories from Kiva borrowers, the good and the bad. As I turn these stories into journals I try to imagine what it would be like to be a Kiva lender on the other side, receiving an update on the Kiva borrower that they chose to fund. There’s a lot of joy in sharing the good, the success stories, a cause for celebration. Why we’re proud to be lending through Kiva. But what about the bad, stories of something gone awry? How does it feel, as a lender, to receive those updates?
What do Kiva lenders expect to hear from Kiva borrowers?
The world has been abuzz with Monday’s news of the election “massacre” in Maguindanao, Mindanao. About 50 lawyers, journalists and relatives of local politicians were abducted and brutally killed because of their affiliation with an opposition politician. This horrific event is being followed closely by the international media, including the New York Times and CNN, because it made Monday “the deadliest single day for journalists anywhere in the world” and was also “the worst politically motivated violence in the Philippines’ recent history.” The U.S. Embassy in Manila issued a travel alert on Wednesday as a result, because of “heightened tensions” and “significant military presence” in Maguindanao.
Ironically, while news of the Monday killings shocked the world, it hasn’t physically affected people here in Northern Mindanao quite as much as another news event which, in contrast, made just a small blip among international media outlets – tropical depression Urduja, which hit the area on Tuesday and caused flooding and landslides in Northern Mindanao. (Incidentally, no U.S. Embassy alert on the tropical storm thus far. Not one that I’ve received, anyways.)
The water had a bit abated by Wednesday morning, but across the street from the office people were wading in water up to their hips. A HSPFI colleague said the traffic island was completely flooded over when he looked outside at 3AM.
Would be the day, any day, when Filipino boxing champion and national hero Manny Pacquiao fights. Most of my (male) co-workers and acquaintances here had circled the date and tensely counted down the days to Pacquiao’s most recent fight (and win) against Miguel Cotto on November 14, 2009, which was broadcast in the Philippines on November 15, 2009. A colleague told me that all activity in the Philippines comes to a grinding halt when Pacquiao fights – traffic and even crime becomes nonexistent on match days because everyone’s watching the boxing. The following day his claim was bolstered by stories in jubilant newspaper reports celebrating the outcome of the match. I read an anecdote in one of the articles about how, even though a father had just lost his children in a fire, he was glad to watch Pacquiao win because it took his mind off of his loss. There were other similar stories from victims of recent hurricanes that struck the northern region of the Philippines, about how watching their hero’s fight really raised their spirits despite all the recent destruction that they had experienced.
I don’t follow boxing at all and had never heard of Manny Pacquiao before arriving in the Philippines, much to my colleagues’ disappointment. However, I’m thankful that Pacquiao won his seventh world championship, even though I ended up missing the big match because of a miserable cold that struck me two days before. The national mood probably would’ve been black with the deepest despair if the Pacman had lost!
Having followed the recent debate over Kiva’s transparency and the P2P model, the main critique that stuck with me was that there should be more transparency on Kiva’s partner MFIs. This resonated with me because I believe that Kiva has, on the whole, picked out partner MFIs that do amazing work and have really compelling stories to tell about their organization. So in that spirit, I’ve decided to share more details here about some of the products and services that my host MFI, Hagdan sa Pag-uswag Foundation, Inc. offers. In addition to lending, Hagdan also offers a mandatory savings program, insurance programs, and leadership/business trainings. Hagdan also runs community development programs out of a different part of the organization.
Before I dive into those services though, I want to devote this post to HSPFI’s interest repayment policy. Over the last six weeks I’ve realized that my understanding of the details is sadly lacking. So one weekend when I was in the office, I grabbed Sir Melchie Badion, HSPFI Internal Auditor, and asked him for a detailed rundown. Knowing that interest payments cover much of an MFI’s operational costs, I wanted to make sure I had everything straight in my head from start to end.
RT @Kiva: #Kiva#Quote of the Month: "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." -Martin Luther King Jr. - 9 minutes ago
It’s been a few weeks since my visit, but I simply loved Camiguin – a beautiful place filled with interesting people and things.
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