In the movie Taken Liam Neeson says, “I don’t have money. But what I do
have is a set of very particular skills that makes me a nightmare for someone
like you.” Kiva is about altruism, not vengeance, but our Fellows are
just as skilled (in a non-violent way) as any ex-spy.
Many people assume that all foreign
travel is basically a beach vacation, and anyone could do it if they just had
the time or money. One friend asked me,
"Apart from speaking Spanish, what skills do you have?" This got me curious about what special skills
my fellow Fellows have, so I asked them to share their proudest moments. The sampling below makes clear that many Kiva Fellows deserve capes, leotards, and letters on their chests.
So just what does a Kiva Fellow do?
- Spend 8 hours a day, 3 days a week plodding through mud and sewage until you're covered from the knees down
Hot-footing it through the muddy, sewage-soaked slums of Nairobi - Meet shy, nervous borrowers and get them talking--in your second language and their third--until they open up and make "thank you" videos
- Convince a group of old men at a banking confrence to be interested in what a young female foreigner has to say
- With no prior planning, help an Iraqi woman formalize her business plan in the Arabic you can barely remember from childhood
- Dance Friday night away with co-workers and return to work totally professional Saturday morning
- Charm local partners into helping you even though they're "too busy"
- Eat everything that's offered to you,
from unidentifiable fruits to crazy-sweet coffee to frozen potatoes to guinea
pig to grasshoppers--and smile and say it's delicious
Rwandan treat - Ride the bus for 19 hours and go straight to work when you get off (in another country)
- Practice agenda-yoga, accepting that what should take an hour takes an afternoon, and what's scheduled for tomorrow won't happen until next week
- Spend
9 hours a day, 5 days a week in a hot, crowded, noisy office writing up
borrower verification visits, working out APR calculations, monitoring
repayment reporting, assessing loan volume and projections, examining social
performance metrics, translating videos, interviewing the Kiva Coordinator, and
uploading photos--in Spanish
On good days, the fan works and the computer runs - Navigate a bustling mess of people
pushing their way through to the markets, vendors peddling goods, and buses
that skim by within an inch of the nearest person to find the right minivan among
hundreds
Maelstrom of minivans in Kampala, Uganda - Convince 34 hesitant borrowers to go public at the biggest launch in history
- "Shrink" the world by showing a borrower his page of 59
lenders, making him fall silent for a couple seconds and then smile very shy
without any words, knowing that so many people out there are supporting his
grocery business
Kiva Magic: a borrower sees his own loan page (Taiwan) - Get students interested in microfinance by being guest speaker at a university
- Ride for hours on end hugging the back of a motorcycle, dodging
stampedes of cows; get stranded by mechanical problems; hike barely existent
footpaths freshly soaked from a recent downpour to reach every borrower
Over the river and through the woods to borrowers' houses we go. . . (Nicaragua) - Travel by plane, bus, motorcycle, bicycle, rickshaw, tuk-tuk, boat, raft, horse, donkey, camel, elephant, and rope ladder
- Forge friendships on the spot: begin with cocktails and end with partners, making the gears turn in strangers' heads, inspired by the possibilities of low-interest loans
- Keep
a group of 18 curious, competitive women calm and harmonious enough to take a
picture
More curious than camera-shy in rural Ghana - Turn a cold call from a representative of a microfinance institution you've never heard of, with no connection to Kiva, into a new partnership
- Convince low-income immigrant women to take a chance on seeking a crowdfunded loan
- Halfway up a mountain, turn asking for directions
into a conference on what Kiva can do for the village
Borrowers-to-be in Manzanapanga, Ecuador - With less than one day to fundraise a new loan, push for 100% and get there
- Live with mosquito nets, bucket showers, blackouts, glacial Internet, paper shortages, toner shortages, water shortages, fuel shortages, change shortages, toilet paper shortages
- Make beggars smile, co-workers laugh, and borrowers cry with joy
Smiles need no translation (Ghana)
To make a loan to almost anywhere else in the world, click here: www.kiva.org.
