Kiva

Hi-

This week's entry is about Kiva.org. I first read about it in a book by Bill Clinton called 'Giving.' It is a microfinancing group. You go to Kiva.org and there you can chose from various businesses to support for a loan of $25. You pay with your credit card. The money is then sent to a local partner in whatever country the business is in. They are responsible for handing out the loans and getting repayment. Most of the loans are for 3-6 months. You get monthly updates the progress of the business. When the loan is repaid back, you can either keep it or lend it again.

My Aunt Lesley and Uncle John we nice enough to give me 2 gift certificates for Kiva. I just made one loan before I recieved this, so there are 3 business in my portfolio. They just raised the funds, so as of now there is no updates yet.

Here are the 3 businesses I chose. It should be fun to watch. At least as fun as fantasy baseball :)

The first is in Nigeria...
Magdalene is 32 years old and married with 3 children. She sells provisions, drinks, wine, and cosmetics. Magdalene needs the loan amount of N50,000 to purchase more products to sell. She hopes to meet the demand of her customers. She says thank you to all who made this loan possible.

The second is in Sierra Leone...

This is Magret S. Thoronka. Magret was born in Bafodia, about eighteen miles from Kabala. She is twenty-eight years old. She is married to a teacher. They have four children together. Magret sells cotton and ground-nuts. She has been in this business for six years. Magret is requesting a loan of Le 2,000,000. This will be her very first loan from SMT. With this loan, Magret will expand her business by buying more goods to add to her current stock. She will use the loan to buy cotton and ground-nuts. She will also use some of the loan for transportation and other expenses relating to her business. She buys the ground-nuts from a make-shift business center, or “luma,” called Bamoi, about 160 miles round-trip from Makeni. She buys the cotton from Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital city, a 390 mile round trip from Makeni. A bag of ground-nuts costs her Le 180,000 at Bamoi, and a piece of cotton costs her Le 25,000 in Freetown. She estimates that she’ll be able to get a least five bags of ground-nuts and thirty-six pieces of cotton with the loan. Although her business is doing well for Magret on the whole, she does, face one great challenge: bad debtors. Some of her customers refuse to pay her on time; some do not repay their debts at all. This instills fear in her as a businesswoman, making it difficult for her to know who to trust and who not to trust. With this loan she receives from SMT, Magret is expecting a vast improvement in her business and an increase in the amount of profit she makes. An increment in profit means making her life a happier one and generating additional business.

and my third loan is in Paraguay...
The group "Mujeres Emprendedoras" is from the city of Limpio. This group was formed with the help of a woman that assited group forming meetings in the city of Limpio. The group had four meetings before requesting the loan where all interested members looked into the program "Comite the Mujeres Emprendedoras." In these meetings, the women shared their experiences with their businesses. The first meetings were attended by 17 women, 16 of whom agreed with the responsibilites of the group. They are currently in their ninth cycle of the program and have 17 members. The loan will be used by the various members to purchase tools for their work or to purchase merchandise or prime materials to make the products which will eventually be sold. The majority of the members of the group dedicate themselves to their independent work such as: sale of food, clothing, sliver jewelry, fruits and groceries. Their specific businesses are the following: 1- Lilian Noelia Ocampos Lopez - Sale of groceries 2-Raquel Arguello Alarcon - Sale of clothing 3-Teresa Pino Rodriguez - Sale of clothing (not in this picture) 4-Maria Lourdes Coronel Duarte - Sale of drinks 5-Jessy Evelin Ocampos Lopez - Sale of coal 6-Ceferina Fernadez Vera - Sale of clothing 7-Maria Vera Alfonso - Sale of hardware 8-Delia Mercedes Rodas de Alarcon - Kiosk 9-Albina Torres Isasi - Sales (not in this picture) 10-Petrona Noemi Barrios de Paredes - Sale of vegetables 11- Nelba Antonia Gonzalez Torres - Sale of hardware 12-Cintia Carolina Alarcon - Sale of clothing 13-Valentina Fleitas de Alarcon - Sale of candies 14-Carolina Beatriz Ruiz Diaz - Sales 15-Eloiza Alarcon Vera - Sale of clothing 16-Norma Liliana Gonzalez Nuñez - Sale of clothing 17- Nidia Esmilce Lopez - Sale of food

So check out Kiva if you are planning on making a donation this holiday season, It allows you to see the impact your money makes unlike giving to a large NGO. Also, 100% of your money is given as a loan, there are no administartive fees.

BOTSWANA!

Hi All-

Last week of we very busy. We had visitors the whole time from our Global Team, so that lead to some late nights. However, for the rest of December Nigeria pretty much shuts down and I am just waiting for the holidays now. The only thing to do before I leave is to finalize my work plans for next year.

I am going to go to Botswana over Christmas and New Years. I will arrive in Johannessburg on December 19th and stay there a few days with a friend I met while in the Peace Corps. Then I will fly to Kasane! I met a friend here in Nigeria who has his family there. I will stay there through Christmas with him and see so many elephants and hippos and stuff. I hope to sneak over and see Victoria Falls as well. Maybe I will go bungee jumping there or some other crazy thing. Then I will travel by road back south through Botswana and visit old friends and my old village. I am really looking forward to it.

Haj's Wedding

Hi All-I have been today that some of my postings are a bit wordy, so this one will just be pictures. This is my coworker's wedding with the whole staff in Jos. I think the bride is so beautiful. If it wasn't for this one guy... Anyways, enjoy.

Jos

Hello All-
I am not sure of the reports you are getting from Nigeria on TV, but I saw this article in the New York Times. NO NEED TO WORRY! Now, I was in Jos on the 27th and 28th for a wedding, but not too close to the riots. I returned safely to Abuja during the early afternoon Saturday. Abuja is about 3 hours from Jos, so I am far from the unrest now. I am pretty safe here (well, at least as safe as in Detroit).

Here is the article from the NYT:


December 1, 2008
Deadly Nigeria Clashes Subside
By LYDIA POLGREEN
DAKAR, Senegal — On Sunday morning, Sani ibn Salihu went to

pray for the dead. Even as he arrived at the central mosque of

the Nigerian city of Jos to join a throng mourning 364 people

whose bodies he said had already been taken there, the

battered corpses kept coming: 11 in the hour he spent praying.

“There were women and children, old men,” among the bodies,

Mr. Salihu, a peace activist and journalist, said in a

telephone interview from Jos, the central Nigerian city where

two days of ferocious violence between Christians and Muslims

after a disputed local election has left hundreds of people

dead.

A tense calm returned to Jos on Sunday as soldiers wrested

control of the streets from armed Christian and Muslim gangs

that had roamed the city, slaughtering people with guns and

machetes and torching houses, churches, shops and cars,

according to residents. The sudden and vociferous explosion of

religious violence was the worst Nigeria has seen in at least

four years.

Religious and health officials gave varying accounts of the

death toll but agreed that at least 400 bodies had already

been recovered and more probably remained in the charred

churches, homes, cars and alleyways that had been no-go zones

until Sunday. The Red Cross said that about 7,000 people had

fled the most violent neighborhoods and that they were living

in shelters.

The clashes began suddenly, taking the city by surprise in

both the swiftness and ferocity of the bloodshed, despite a

long history of religious violence in the region. The trouble

began Friday as results of elections trickled in for important

local government posts that control hundreds of thousands of

dollars in government funds.

Elections have not been held in Jos for years, in part because

of fears that the political parties would split along

religious lines, which is in fact what happened. Even before

the results were announced, gangs on both sides began

rampaging, anticipating defeat. Christian gangs claimed that

the governing party, the P.D.P., was being cheated of victory,

while Muslim gangs claimed that the opposition A.N.P.P., which

is identified largely with Muslims in the north, was being

robbed of its win.

Nigeria’s 140 million people are about evenly divided between

the Muslim and Christian faiths. People of both religions live

all across the country, often cheek by jowl, usually in

relative peace.

But the religious divide in this nation of more than 250

ethnic groups mirrors a geographical one, between a

historically Muslim north and a Christian and animist south,

as well as deep political divisions that cross religious

lines. Beyond that there are conflicts over land and political

power, which are often intertwined as a result of traditional

customs that hold the rights of indigenous people over those

of migrants from other parts of the country. Religion is

almost always a proxy for those grievances.

The fissures are so profound that it takes only the smallest

tremor for a seemingly peaceful community to descend into an

abyss of bloodletting. In 2002, a dispute over a perceived

insult to Islam during a beauty pageant led to riots in which

hundreds died. In 2006, riots over Danish cartoons depicting

the Prophet Muhammad led to the deaths of nearly 200 people in

several Nigerian cities, more than in any other country that

experienced violence in the global backlash against the

cartoons.

Nigeria’s Middle Belt, a band of fertile land that straddles

the largely Muslim north and the Christian south, has always

been a hotbed of ethnic and religious violence, and Plateau

State, of which Jos is the capital, has borne the brunt.

Most of the state’s original inhabitants come from tribes that

are almost entirely Christian and animist, but the farmland

and grazing pasture has attracted migrants for centuries,

especially Muslim Hausa and Fulani people from the more arid

north. In Jos, a picturesque city set on a verdant plateau in

central Nigeria, 1,000 people died in religious riots in 2001,

and in 2004 hundreds more were killed in a nearby city of

Yelwa. Jos became a balkanized city, with Muslims and

Christians retreating to separate neighborhoods.

Despite the history of religious bloodshed in the region,

residents, officials and activists said the city had come a

long way toward healing divisions. Interfaith commissions set

up to improve relations between the faiths and ethnic groups

after the 2001 riots appeared to help cool tensions. “Things

had really improved in Jos,” said Nankin Bagudu, a Christian

and state government commissioner who had worked with the

League for Human Rights. “Nobody expected this kind of

violence this time.”

Mr. Salihu, a Muslim, said that the violence threatened to

undo years of careful bridge building between the communities.

“As someone who has been involved in a peace work between

Christian and Muslims, this has set our work back 10 years,”

he said. “It will take us a very long time to rebuild the

confidence.”