Thursday, July 16, 2009

Paris Kiva Cup 2009

Over 200 people came out for the Kiva Cup in Paris on June 27th! We had volunteers from both Kiva Friends and the Kiva France Lending Team. The event was hosted by Les Condors 2000 and was considered such a success that the organizers have already reserved an even larger stadium in France for next year’s Kiva Cup! A huge congratulations goes out to the lead organizers for hosting such a wonderful event and Charlotte brings some of it to life for us here...

“The event was great! Everything went perfect: it was a warm day in a nice location, the soccer tournament was a lot of fun, and people enjoyed the music and drinks in the sun! We tried to make Kiva as visible as possible, with banners along the stadium and in the benches, and I set up a Kiva booth close to the bar with outreach materials in both French and English. We had a screen displaying short videos about Kiva and I set up my laptop to explain how to use the website. We also had a few T-shirts and a lot of stickers to increase Kiva brand-awareness. We are very excited for next year’s event, especially because we will have more time to organize it, and we plan to invite artists, singers and a lot of companies to support Kiva! We also plan to involve the three largest Parisian Business Schools because they each have a microfinance student group. Overall, we’re thrilled with the success and are already looking forward to next summer’s Kiva Cup!”

If this excites you and you’d like to be involved in helping to plan for an event, let us know! The Community Outreach Team is currently looking for star volunteers to host Kiva Awareness Events of different sizes and natures in their communities. Just e-mail kivacommunity@gmail.com for more information. Also, check out our calendar to see if there are any events coming soon near you.