“So why exactly are you going to Senegal?”

In the weeks since returning from San Francisco, my farewell/ bon voyage dinners, lunches and drinks have often been met with the very fair and obvious question of “So remind me… why are you going away AGAIN?”

For many people, the extent of their knowledge about my upcoming trip has been limited to the (i’m sure very annoying) Facebook status updates counting down my days at work, or the “Kiva.org – loans that change lives” signature at the bottom of my emails or, if they’re really fortunate a brief description about what Kiva does with a little nudge for them to head to the site to make a loan or at least buy a gift certificate or two at Christmas.

Whilst I totally understand that for many of my busy friends and colleagues that is quite enough information to be going on with, I thought it may be worth explaining very briefly what the Kiva Fellows Program entails and the kind of thing i will be up to once I get to Senegal in December. If nothing else, this post is for all those people at work who have endlessly referred to my upcoming sabbatical as a ‘holiday’ and been met with an exasperated “How many times?? This is not a holiday!!” (well, apart from the first 5 weeks – more on that soon!)

As a Kiva Fellow, we will be working to satisfy the needs of 4 important stakeholders of Kiva : the lenders, the borrowers, the MFI and Kiva itself. Our tasks whilst in the field can broadly be split down according to the stakeholders that they benefit.

Lenders:
Over the last 4 years Kiva has grown a lender base of over 550,000. Of this number, many are repeat lenders who have a significant portfolio of loans and a large sum of money constantly invested in Kiva borrowers all over the world.
Some of the more ‘keen’ Kiva lenders out there may be an active member of the Kiva Friends website – an independent forum set up by Kiva fans to discuss all things Kiva and to provide a feedback loop to Kiva’s customer services. Others are devout followers of the Kiva Fellows Blog – a blog to which all 50 members of my KF9 class will be submitting postings about their experiences at MFIs all over the world.
Whilst these Kivans are hugely important to Kiva, it is also crucial that the material on the website is engaging enough to encourage even more people who are new to Kiva to lend. I’ll be doing my best to bring people to the Fellows Blog and the Kiva website for that very reason! So the content that we will be writing has to be of interest to those reading it and enough of a call to action to hopefully receive some funds. I’ll do my best….

In order to attract lenders to the loans at my MFI, I will be making sure that the Kiva co-ordinator at SEM is posting high quality content to the Kiva website, both at the outset by detailing the way that the loan is to be used and when giving updates to the lenders throughout the loan term.

These journals are extremely important to Kiva, as it has been shown that receiving a journal update about a loan actually encourages a lender to re-lend to other borrowers on the site.

Borrowers
During our visits to the field, we will be interviewing borrowers about how the Kiva loan that they have received has impacted them. This is partly for the journal updates mentioned above, but also to give a sense of the social impact that microfinance is having and the MFI’s ability to reach those in need.
For the number crunchers among us, another task will be to verify the actual interest rates being paid and in my case, undertake a special project looking into the feasbility of providing other products to borrowers, such as solar panels, mills and refrigerators. All of this will help us to make an assessment of how borrower needs are being met and what impact microfinance is actually having.

MFI
At the MFI, the Kiva Fellows represent Kiva and all of the practices and policies associated with it. In order to get their interest-free funding from Kiva, the MFI agrees to provide Kiva with stories. They upload a photo and a description of each and every Kiva borrower and write the journals mentioned above.
Whilst I am at SEM, I will provide any additional training that the loan officers require in order to use the Kiva tools provided to them. I will also calculate the actual cost to the MFI of using Kiva to (hopefully) confirm that all of this extra effort is worth their while

Kiva
An important task to carry out for Kiva will be Borrower Verification. Simply put, checking that the people applying for loans on the Kiva website are who they say they are and are paying the interest that they say they are paying. In order to do this, I will again need to go out into the field to meet borrowers face-to-face. In the absence of precise addresses and effective communications this task may well take many hours and many long trips into the remotest parts of Senegal. But if i’m honest, this is the task I am most looking forward to and undoubtedly the part that will provide me with the most amazing and probably frustrating stories too.
Lastly, Kiva needs us to ensure that the MFI can operate without a Kiva Fellow. That they are comfortable with the processes and policies and feel able to continue without a Kiva representative on hand 24/7. So all in all, if i do a good job then I should have made myself redundant!