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The Kiva partner MFI that I work with, Tujijenge Tanzania, is only 2-years-old and relatively small. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t doing great things. Just last week, they formed a partnership with Unitus. Unitus is an NGO based in Seattle, Washington. It works to reduce global poverty by partnering with MFIs and offering support to them so that they can grow faster and efficiently serve more clients. As of now, they have less than 30 partnerships around the world, so Tujijenge is pretty special!
Check out this press release on the new partnership. Must be all the great work I’m doing at Tujijenge : )
I am finally in love. In love with my job, that is. But who wouldn’t be when their job entails meeting men and women, whom with access to credit for the first time are improving their economic well-being. Like the woman I met last week in Kichemchem. A small loan enabled her to expand her butchery business and increase her monthly income from $100 to $800! It is known as microfinance – offering financial services to the poor. A relatively new phenomenon, the key concept behind microfinance is that a small loan to a poor person can help him or her break the cycle of poverty. Typically the poor lack access to credit, but microfinance institutions (MFIs) all over the developing world are now offering them the opportunity to borrow money. Microfinance has already improved the lives of billions of poor people, but there are many more that have not yet been reached.
Microfinance is the reason I came to Dar. Man, did I jump in the deep end! I take up to three crowded, sweaty public buses down bumpy dirt roads to visit a loan group. Once I’ve arrived, I locate the meeting place only to find 20 people gathered around counting money. They are making their weekly loan payments, but while counting and recording payments, they are chatting with each other and laughing. They range from young to old and are mostly women, many whom are carrying small children tied to their backs with colorful kangas. These aren’t just any people receiving a loan from a typical bank – these are Tujijenge Tanzania clients. And if I am taking 2-hour bus rides to remote areas of Dar es Salaam to visit them, then they are Kiva clients too.
Kiva is an NGO based in San Francisco. It is a fledgling organization, but it is innovatively changing the face of microfinance. Through a website and MFI partners around the world, Kiva enables the average person to lend money to an entrepreneur in the developing world. And not just any entrepreneur. The one you choose, in the country of your choice, conducting business in an industry of interest to you. The money you lent is returned to you, and you can take it out of the system or re-lend to someone else. So for $25 (that you’ll even get back!), you can help someone in the developing world break out of poverty. Check out www.kiva.org for more details, and maybe lend to an entrepreneur while you are at it!
So where do I come in? I am here as a Kiva Fellow working with one of Kiva’s partners, Tujijenge Tanzania. I help them post business profiles onto the Kiva website to raise funds to disperse. Then, I head into the field to visit clients and get an update on the impact of their loan – information I pass on to Kiva lenders.
With the opportunity to work for organizations like Tujijenge Tanzania and Kiva, and see the success of microfinance first-hand, how can I not be inspired and in love with my job? Regardless, it definitely beats working at Fannie Mae.
Me and Rita, the Kiva coordinator at Tujijenge
