Social Performance In Action: Tech Training and Education in Costa Rica

In addition to loans, many of our field partners go above and beyond by offering their clients additional services and support in a variety of areas. In an effort to encourage and measure the impact of these products and services, we established a Social Performance team here at Kiva and awarded these partners with badges corresponding to each area of support. This blog series seeks to provide our online community with stories from the field about the amazing work some of our partners are doing to meet specialized client needs.

Today, we're taking a closer look at field partner Foundation for the Development of Southern Communities (FUDECOSUR), a non-profit microfinance institution (MFI) established to promote development in the poorest regions of southern Costa Rica. FUDECOSUR has a strong commitment to social performance, exemplified by its profit distribution system tailored to meet important social needs.


Recycling training with borrower group - Photo by Julie Kerr KF 16

Here’s how it works

Profit surpluses are distributed to any village bank community in need of training. The program, coordinated directly by FUDECOSUR's director and loan officers, provides free technical training and education to improve community health and sanitation, increase crop yields, and expand alternative job opportunities. Some of the training courses offered in the past include:

• Computer literacy for children and adults

• Food handling and sanitation, with a curriculum designed to improve community health and support small food service businesses

• Recycling

• Water purification

• Sewing and clothes making

• Coffee cultivation, including planting and maintenance techniques to increase crop yields

• Livestock health for improving animal care and output by identifying nutrition needs, resources and supplements, optimal pasture care and maintenance, new illness identification, prevention and treatment methods

• Hydroponic farming to optimize more environmentally-friendly, pesticide-free, fungicide-free and disease-free agriculture


Turning used paper into hand crafted cards for borrowers to sell. Photo by Jule Kerr, KF 16. 

In addition to the seminars, FUDECOSUR regularly partners with a biologist from the Social Environmental Management Department of Grupo ICE, the national electricity and telecommunications company, to provide community recycling training to village bank communities. Courses include educational presentations plus hands-on practice.

After training is complete, members of the community work independently to establish, maintain and strengthen their community recycling programs by educating neighbors and establishing regular collection dates. Women from FUDECOSUR village bank communities often request recycling training to help increase incomes for community members, given that recyclables can be sold to manufacturing companies.

Currently in Costa Rica, municipal garbage collection and dumping services do not separate materials, making recycling education even more important for ecologically-friendly waste disposal -- especially considering that hazardous and toxic materials like batteries require special handling.

Stay tuned every other Friday for a new Social Performance in Action story from the field.

Questions? Comments? Send them to blog@kiva.org.

Week in Review: Let’s Talk About Shorty Awards and Eye Opening Experiences

The Week in Review is a new feature we'll bring you every Friday to keep Kiva's fans and lenders up to date with news on microfinance, global development and all things Kiva from the previous week.

The Shorty Awards: Bubbly video blogger Marie Forleo is nominated for a Shorty Award -- rewarding excellence in social media marketing -- and has pledged $10,000 to Kiva if she wins. There's still time to tweet your vote. Jump on the bandwagon and help Marie support borrowers around the world through Kiva. Marie’s passion is infectious and we are thrilled that she is passionate about Kiva!



Barefoot, the other side of life: The Hindu newspaper this week told the story of Matt and Tusha, two American-educated Indian citizens who have decided to live a month of their lives on the same budget as an average impoverished Indian. In the article, they describe what it tastes, sounds and feels like to live on 26 rupees, or $1 a day. They knew it was going to be hard. What they didn't expect was how difficult it would be to go back to "normal" life after the experiment was over.

Would you try an experiment like this? What do you think you'd learn? Share your thoughts with us at blog@kiva.org. For more on Matt and Tusha's experience, check out Rs100aday.

photo courtesy of Mustafa Khayat

Mongolia’s XacBank Turns Loans into Savings

Let’s talk savings. Imagine you are a seamstress living in central Mongolia -- like this Kiva borrower -- and your husband’s cab breaks down or you need to fix a leaky roof. How are you going to pay for that? Without savings, your options are limited to borrowing either from a bank or an individual. But that may require a long wait, making the need for cash even more dire.

If you had savings, however, this cash flow problem could be averted, or at least diminished. This is the goal of Kiva field partner XacBank. Based in Mongolia, it's offering Kiva clients voluntary savings accounts to smooth out life’s unexpected financial speedbumps.

While XacBank has been educating its Kiva borrowers about the benefits of savings accounts since 2010, it only recently launched a campaign to make saving a reality for more people. It's issuing gift cards to its Kiva clients, allowing them to open savings accounts with 9% of the interest they repaid on a loan. As a result, 3,000 Mongolian Kiva borrowers now have savings accounts where there were none.

The impact is visible. Early last year, XacBank client Gantsetseg B borrowed $2,050 via Kiva to grow her sewing business. She purchased more fabric, two new sewing machines and hired three additional people. After she repaid her loan on time, XacBank gave her a savings gift card, getting her started with an account and helping her expand her business to 10 employees and seven sewing machines.

Savings has become an important part of Kiva’s vision for a world where all people -- even in the most remote areas of the globe -- have the power to create opportunities for themselves and others.

To reward and highlight our field partners who offer voluntary savings accounts, we award them with the “Facilitation of Savings” social performance badge. The idea is to encourage more microfinance institutions and banks to do the same, and allow lenders who support savings to loan for this cause.

To learn more about our social performance badges and how we measure and reward our field partners for additional services they provide to their borrowers, check out this Kiva webinar:

Passport Series: The Forces Shaping Microfinance in El Salvador

This is the first of a three part series taking a deep-dive look at El Salvador, its history with microfinance, Kiva's role in expanding opportunities for Salvadorans, and what it's like to participate in the country's economy as a borrower, lender and field worker. We hope you enjoy.

Nestled in the heart of Central America is El Salvador, the region’s smallest and most densely populated country. Home to 6 million people, El Salvador has long been shaped by social inequality and its susceptibility to natural disasters. But, now, a renewed focus on economic self-sufficiency -- paired with the country’s strong sense of community -- has the potential to redefine and rebuild Salvadorans’ future.



Kiva, recognizing both tremendous need and opportunity in the country, has worked with field partners in El Salvador since 2007. In this blog post, we’ll take a closer look at El Salvador’s current political, economic and social issues. Through these lenses, we’ll discuss the need for microfinance and the role Kiva hopes to play in El Salvador going forward.

In the aftermath of the civil war -- fought largely on rural farm land -- Salvadorans have worked hard to rebuild the country’s crucial agriculture sector. El Salvador’s GDP dropped a staggering 23% during the conflict. But since the the peace accord, its economy has been growing steadily. Investing in sustainable rural agriculture has been key to strengthening food security, decreasing poverty and creating stable jobs.


Monument in El Mozote honoring casualties of the civil war. 

Decades of inequality between the wealthy minority who ran the government and the impoverished majority led to a bitter 12-year civil war from 1980 to 1992. During the conflict, many of the people, institutions, and infrastructure necessary for development and economic prosperity were targeted and destroyed -- including bridges, power lines, independent farmers and university officials. In total, the civil war resulted in more than 70,000 deaths and $2 billion in damages. Even 20 years later, El Salvador’s economy and culture remain inextricably linked to these years of violent unrest.

Investing across sectors is critical to empowering the 36% of Salvadorans who live in poverty. The average annual income is $4,900, with many families relying heavily on remittances. Money from family members working abroad accounts for 18% of El Salvador’s GDP, tying its success to the world’s economy at large.



The economic conditions, social inequality and an increase in deportation of Salvadorans from the United States has led to a surge in gang violence. The transnational gang Mara Salvatrucha, known as MS-13, has a notable and destructive presence in urban areas where the economic divide is most pronounced.

On top of that, the global financial meltdown has deeply impacted the country -- compounded by a string of natural disasters. The economic divide is still prominent, with the income of the richest 10% of the population remaining 47 times higher than that of the poorest 10%.




Further hampering reconstruction is the fact that El Salvador is located along the Pacific Ring of Fire, in a region identified by the United Nations as being most affected by climate change. In 1998, Hurricane Mitch killed 240 Salvadorans and resulted in $400 million in damages. In 2001, a 7.6 earthquake killed 844 people, followed one month later by a devastating 6.6 quake that killed 315 and incurred $1 billion in damages. 

In October 2011, tropical depression 12-e resulted in severe flooding and landslides, costing an estimated $1.5 billion. El Salvador’s vulnerability to extreme weather raises the importance of focusing on strengthening its farming sector. Sustainable agriculture increases a country's resilience across the board.

Kiva believes that helping El Salvador means not only encouraging business and self-sufficiency through loans. Our Strategic Initiatives team is always working to break the cycle of poverty -- in El Salvador and globally -- through creative partnerships that address issues like education, access to clean water and sanitation, and clean energy.



In El Salvador, we are particularly interested in fostering the growing network of women’s groups that have emerged to organize reconstruction efforts and support their communities. Working with successful systems already on the ground and encouraging innovative development, Kiva hopes to play an important role in building a peaceful, strong and more equal El Salvador.

Sources consulted and figures cited courtesy of CIA World Factbook, World Food Programme, New York Times, CGAP, USGS and MIX Market. Photos courtesy of Ahvega, SmithFischer, Shared Interest and CIA World Factbook.

Do You Know What Today Is?

It’s the second day of Random Act of Kindness week -- otherwise known as Generosity Day. Thought I was going to say something else, didn’t you? Regardless, today is a day to celebrate connection, whether it’s with the barista who remembered your order, a supportive friend, your sweetheart, or a borrower in Tanzania. Being connected makes people stronger, more resilient and compassionate, which is truly worth celebrating.

Maybe you want to buy your barista flowers or send your friend a box of chocolates. Or maybe you want to celebrate your meaningful connection by encouraging those individuals to connect to even more people through lending by giving them a Kiva Card -- to “loan it forward,” so to speak.

However you decide to celebrate and thank the people with whom you are grateful to be connected, we want to hear about it. Tweet us, post on our wall, or write us at our (new!) email address, blog@kiva.org, to tell us how you celebrated February 14 -- whatever it means to you!

Innovating To Expand Opportunities

This is the first of a multi-part blog series looking at how Kiva is getting creative with lending and partnerships to make an impact in exciting, new areas. Below, watch a short video introduction to the series with Kiva Director of Strategic Initiatives Michelle Kreger.

Imagine having limited or no access to higher education, nontoxic lighting, or clean water. These are realities faced by millions of people around the world every day. Kiva’s mission, now and always, has been to connect people through lending to change this picture.

We envision a world where every individual has the power to create opportunity for themselves and others. Working toward this reality, we challenge ourselves to find new ways for our lenders’ flexible, risk-tolerant capital to grow markets and reach even more people with innovative loan products. This is core to Kiva’s quest for deeper impact – one that is shared by our generous lender community.

In the coming months, this blog series will highlight important new work in this area spearheaded by Kiva’s Strategic Initiatives team. These efforts will expand Kiva’s footprint in exciting directions and continue evolving our work to alleviate poverty through microlending.

Through this series, we’ll introduce you to a new set of Kiva partners – from universities to social businesses, from mobile service providers to green technology vendors. For the first time, Kiva is working with partners other than microfinance institutions to offer different types of loan products. In doing so, we look forward to innovating how we partner with organizations and companies to give more people access to financial services and opportunities.

Designed to highlight both the challenges and potential of these new partnerships, this blog series will explore five areas where they are active:

1. Higher Education
2. Innovative Agriculture
3. Clean Energy
4. Water and Sanitation
5. Mobile Transactions

Blog posts falling into each of these categories will look at the types of funding that currently support individuals and organizations working in these fields, what more could be done, and how Kiva’s unique approach to microlending could make a difference. We will also be spotlighting Kiva partners and borrowers affiliated with these areas as they appear on the website – so stay tuned.

We sincerely hope you enjoy this series, and would love to hear your feedback along the way at blog@kiva.org.

Talk To Us!

We have decided to establish the email blog@kiva.org specifically to hear from you on blog related content. We wanted to create a way for you to respond to, engage with and contribute to our blog. But before we get to chatting, there are a few issues we’d like to discuss.

1. Setting expectations: While we really want to hear from you, we might not be able to respond right away given the volume of feedback. We promise to do our best, but can’t guarantee a speedy reply.

2. Purpose: Please only send blog-specific emails to this address, whether you’re responding to a post or sharing a story. We’re excited to hear your travel stories, see your photos, and showcase your Kiva anecdotes and comments. That said, please send questions, operational concerns and other thoughts outside of the blog through our contact us page.

3. It’s Beta: This email address is something completely new for us, and we think it has tremendous potential to increase and build connections (which is what Kiva is all about), but if it doesn't work we will tweak it or try something else.

We can’t wait to hear from you at blog@kiva.org!