Professors
What is Kiva?
Microfinance
Microfinance is the supply of loans, savings, and other basic financial services to the poor. Since the poor are rarely able to access credit through formal financial markets, these services have proven to be a powerful instrument for poverty reduction.
Kiva
Kiva is the world’s first person-to-person micro-lending website, which empowers individuals to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs in the developing world. Kiva’s mission is “to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty.”
How Does Kiva Work?
1) You choose an entrepreneur to lend to, and lend $25 or more (the entire $25 goes to the entrepreneur)
2) Your loan is distributed to the entrepreneur through one of our Microfinance partners in the field
3) Updates are posted on your entrepreneur and you can track their progress
4) Over time, the entrepreneur repays the loan, and you can re-lend or withdraw the funds
Campus Kiva
Campus Kiva brings microlending to a whole new level: giving students the opportunity to play a direct role in changing lives. Our mission is to educate students about the potential impact of microfinance and to encourage micro-lending through Kiva’s lending teams.
Through an international network of university chapters, Campus Kiva provides students with the perfect avenue to channel their desire to make a difference. Campus Kiva provides its chapters with the infrastructure and resources they need to establish a permanent presence on campus. The program offers its chapters a variety of opportunities to participate in a variety of activities and competitions, and strongly encourages intra- university collaboration.
In the Fall of 2008, Campus Kiva officially launched at 20 university campuses world-wide and is continuing to grow.
Get Involved!
Now you have the chance to get involved in the cutting edge of economic development. By participating in Campus Kiva at your school, you can help those in need while having fun with fellow students!
For more information about Campus Kiva, or if you’d like to start a chapter at your school, please contact Morgan Lucas: Morgan@kiva.org
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The Universality of Kiva
Kiva by Discipline
Kiva and Microlending can easily be integrated into a variety of curricula because both are surprisingly versatile topics that function nicely within the context of a wide variety of disciplines. The topic of Microlending has obvious associations with economics, entrepreneurship, development studies, and sociology, but is not constrained to only these fields. Faculty have found other meaningful, innovative ways to integrate Microlending and the role of Kiva into courses in Spanish, communications, and environmental science. Microlending and Kiva are topics that are relevant, timely, and inspiring enough to be appropriately integrated into your course.
- Economics – International Development, Finance, Microfinance, macro and micro economic tools to alleviate poverty
- Business – entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship, management, marketing
- Sociology – social problems, social movements, development, poverty, activism, globalization, social networks
- Environmental Science – environmental issues affecting entrepreneur businesses
- Political Science – global citizenship, nonprofit sector vs. government action
- Foreign Language – translation of Kiva.org materials such as journal entries from MFIs, area studies
- Communication – internet as global village, rhetoric of Kiva marketing
Kiva as a Group Exercise
Kiva can also act as a valuable tool for a group/team assignment or activity. There is a range of ways in which to do this, but we can offer some suggestions below:
- Separate students into groups or teams and provide each team with a $25 Kiva gift certificate. Instruct them to develop a strategy about how they will loan the money (risk averse, environmentally conscious, benefitting the greater community, etc.). After they have loaned the $25, have them track the loan and entrepreneur’s progress.
- Divide students into groups and have them develop their own plan on how to fundraise for loans and also a craft a lending strategy as in the example above.
- Assign students to research all aspects of the lending process including the MFI, country, industry of the entrepreneur, and any other relevant topics.
Other Suggested Activities
- During a class period, make a loan as a class
- As homework, have students (as individuals or groups) peruse the Kiva website and select an entrepreneur that they would like to lend to. Ask them to explain why they chose that entrepreneur.
- Show one of the video clips from the resource section about how microlending and Kiva.org actually works.
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Microfinance can easily be applied in a variety of economics classes, especially those that focus on development and the plausible tools available to combat world poverty. The example below highlights how one professor was able to utilize Kiva during their discussion of Microfinance within the greater scheme of development planning.
Case Study: Point Loma Nazarene University
Submitted by Robert Gailey, Associate Professor, Fermanian School of Business. Contact Robert.
Economics 470: Contemporary Development Planning
Required Texts
1. Development as Freedom by Amartya Sen.
2. How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas by David Bornstein
Other Required Reading
1. The Economist magazine
2. Chapter 11 of Economic Development by Todaro and Smith
3. Journal articles as assigned
4. Library research material
Course Content
Large-scale country-wide development planning played a significant role in international development following the Second World War and throughout most of the cold war. However, starting in the mid to late 80’s, development planning’s failures led many countries to look for more market-driven, grass-roots approaches to addressing issues of poverty and more localized planning processes. Social entrepreneurship has arisen as a new “hot topic” in international development. Many social entrepreneurs are gaining fame (and some access to fortunes) as the world seeks new ways to address some of the most daunting issues facing the world in the 21st century. This course attempts to explore the old style of development planning and the new wave of social entrepreneurship with a major emphasis on the role social entrepreneurs are playing in creating innovative opportunities to overcome issues of poverty.
Course Objectives
Upon the completion of this course, students should be able to:
- Describe various approaches to development planning in different countries and contexts.
- Explain the ongoing shift in many countries from centralized planning to more market-driven approaches to address poverty and inequality.
- Present the emerging role of social entrepreneurship in international development.
- Utilize several resources to investigate and understand Individual social entrepreneurs, their ideas and personal histories and their unique approaches to addressing issues of poverty and development.
- Articulate the role of culture and values in the creation of formal and informal institutions that foster development.
- Address a particular issue related to poverty and economic development and know how to utilize research resources to connect with the actors involved in the sector.
- Know how to access funding and media sources that promote social entrepreneurship.
- Describe a number of ways students can be involved and support social entrepreneurs as they seek to change the world.
- Articulate and critique international development issues and operations from a perspective involving a follower of Christ engaged in a local church community.
A personal objective for this course is the instructor’s hope that by engaging in the contents of this course and through interaction with people working on issues of international economic development, you will gain a greater appreciation for, and potential interest in, how you can apply your best skills and efforts towards addressing the complex and desperate situation regarding people living in chronic poverty by choosing to work on these issues either here or abroad. In sum, my hope is that this class will help nurture you to become a social entrepreneur!
Kiva.org
Each student is expected to contribute at least $25 as a loan to an entrepreneur working in a developing country through the following website (www.kiva.org). This loan may or may not be paid back, so there is the potential that the student will not receive back his or her money. However, historically repayment rates have been very strong (around 98%) so it is likely that within 8-12 months, the student will have the loan amount returned, if the student prefer, he or she can lend the money back out again. There are several countries, types of businesses, and people to whom you can choose to lend.
During the semester, time is taken during class periods to have individual students explain to the class who he or she invested in and why. The professor also asks students to update the class on repayment activities as a means of generating discussions about key issues in microfinance such as default and interest rates.
The professor additionally used Kiva to discuss the pros and cons of its business model from the MFI perspective.
Instructor’s Background
The instructor has been working with a number of nonprofit organizations in the field of international economic development for the past 13 years. His primary emphasis has been in the field of microfinance and microenterprise development. He has extensive experience in the use of poverty measurement techniques, advocacy, institutional development, and the transformation of nonprofit entities into for-profit or regulated independent institutions. Due to the instructor’s background and preference, class lectures and presentations will emphasize more the broader analysis of opportunities and challenges related to development planning and social entrepreneurship and less on hard econometric statistical analysis. Some of this analysis, however, is covered in Sen’s book and students will be expected to know enough to do well with the material during exams and possible quizzes.
For further questions about this course and materials, please feel free to contact Robert Gailey.
Social Entrepreneurship
Valuable lessons can be taught using microfinance as a platform. Students can learn to employ principles of entrepreneurship just as entrepreneurs have on the Kiva website. Here are a few ideas from other students and professors about how to engage university students in the process of social entrepreneurship:
Gumball Capital
A non-profit organization created by Students at Stanford University with a mission to “get students inspired, educated, and involved in fighting poverty through entrepreneurship.”
Their most recent endeavor has been to create Gumball University, an online portal for social entrepreneurship. This section of their website contains both a Social E-Course and a guide on how to Start a Venture.
- Social E-Course: A student-initiated course that introduces to students a collection of best practices and most thought provoking concepts over a 10-week period.
- Start a Venture: Useful tips and insightful articles to help with those starting their own venture.
African Ice
The idea for African Ice originated from a BYU mechanical engineer graduate, Jon Borden, when he was trying to develop a better method of fundraising for his previous company, which sent doctors to work in South America. He started the small business, African Ice, consisting of small shacks that sell flavored shaved ice.
He later partnered with Eric Petersen, an architecture graduate from University of Utah and began to grow the business. The business model is based on a three-month operation cycle with low risk and minimal infrastructure. Because of this unique model, African Ice is able to defer revenues and instead use them as loans for Kiva. When the loans are paid back, African Ice is then able to recognize the revenues. It has proven to not only be a delicious summer refreshment, but also a valuable teaching tool for the local community and students interested in social entrepreneurship.
The words “Microfinance” or “Microlending” can often be misleading and create false assumptions that they solely fall under categories like economics, business, and other related fields. However, microlending and microfinance truly are social mechanisms and can be easily studied from the angle of a sociology concentration. The example below shows how one professor has integrated Kiva into his sociology course.
Case Study: Luther College
Submitted by Brett Johnson, Sociology professor, Luther College, brett@luther.edu): In my Introduction to Sociology course, after studying dynamics of global development, I propose microlending as a possible development tool. For homework, students watch the episode of PBS “Frontline World” on some of Kiva’s first loans in Uganda (see link in video resources).
In class, I give a lecture on microlending and Kiva.org (see PowerPoint lecture). During that lecture we actually make a Kiva loan. We then have a discussion about the strengths and weaknesses of microlending relative to other tools (e.g., macroeconomic measures, foreign aid, charity) as a poverty alleviation tool.
For the next class, each student has the assignment to select an entrepreneur and make a $25 loan using the funds that our campus Kiva chapter has raised. The following class I lead a discussion about why they chose the entrepreneur they did and any reactions to reading the various entrepreneurial profiles. This same assignment could be used even without funds–just have them identify an entrepreneur they would want to lend to (but don’t actually make the loan). Students find this to be an exciting unit because it provides an outlet for their desire to be “part of the solution” and it provides a great experience to discuss the causes of global inequality and the in/ability of microlending to address these causes.
Kiva and Microfinance have relevance to the study of Environmental Science because many entrepreneurs work in the sector of agriculture. This opens up the opportunity for students to learn about different geographical regions of the developing world as well as:
- Business opportunities in less developed countries
- The benefits and perhaps disadvantages of Microfinance in assisting entrepreneurs in these developing countries who lack access to credit
- The environmental issues facing the entrepreneurs in these countries
- Alternative solutions to dealing with global issues such as poverty
Case Study: Thomas University
Pine Cone Innovation Grant Application
Project title: Integrating Kiva into Environmental Science at Thomas University
Submitted by: Andrew Miller, Associate Professor of Biology
Telephone, email: 850-878-7653, Contact Andrew Miller.
1. Research Area: Environmental Research, Stewardship, and Education
2a. Funding Requirement: $1,000, to be set up in an account to fund micro-loans.
2b. Project Schedule: If funds can be made available quickly, then money will be lent by the Environmental Science (BIO 351) class during the 2009 summer session.
May-June – Research Kiva, set up a data base, choose entrepreneurs
July 1-15 – Lend money and obtain background information on the proposed project
July 15- 31 – Develop a plan for a long-term relationship between Thomas University and Kiva that can be a part of future Environmental Science classes.
2c. Project Abstract:
Background.Kiva (http://www.kiva.org/) is a person-to-person micro-lending organization that enables individuals to lend directly to entrepreneurs around the globe. Their mission is to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty.
Last month I contacted Morgan Lucas, Director of Campus Kiva, and proposed that students in Environmental Science classes at Thomas University become involved with microlending. Ms. Lucas responded favorably and put me in touch with Dr. Brett Johnson, Luther College, Decorah, Iowa, who has a similar program for his sociology students.
Purpose. Funds from the Pine Cone Grant will be used to establish an account to lend money to third world entrepreneurs. Students will to learn about global environmental issues and participate in a process to reduce poverty.
Approach: Environmental Science students (Summer 2009) will complete the following tasks:
- Obtain background information on Kiva and the micro-loan concept.
- Choose one or more entrepreneurs who have projects related to important environmental issues.
- Loan funds and document the process. Funds will be returned and can be lent by future classes.
- Collect background data and information on the borrower, his country, and the proposed project.
- Establish a micro-lending program, information system, and participation protocol to foster a long-term relationship between TU and microlending at Kiva.
Value of the Research: Thomas University students will become knowledgeable on global environmental issues and needs of third world countries by obtaining information on Kiva and the microloan concept. They will establish a long-term relationship with Kiva and their mission to connect people through lending.
Supplements:
William Cunningham and Mary Ann Cunningham Environmental Science: A Global Concern
As we have discovered over the years, the world is more interconnected than we ever could have known. The phrase economic development is often thrown about in discussion, but economic development isn’t possible without the development of social and political systems as well. Below is a case study of how a Political Science professor was able to integrate microfinance into her course and use Kiva as an interactive example.
Case Study: Point Loma Nazarene University
Submitted by Lindsey Lupo, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Point Loma Nazarene University. Contact Lindsey Lupo.
Introduction to Political Science
Required Texts:
Understanding the Political World: A Comparative Introduction to Political Science by James N. Danziger
Course Content:
The last third of the class is spent investigating the realm of development (economic, social, and political) and looking at how these three avenues of development intersect. The textbook briefly introduces the idea of microfinance and its application to development. Students are additionally shown the film “Small Fortunes.”
After watching the film, students are introduced to the Kiva.org website as well as the organization itself. Together, the class searches through the list of entrepreneurs and chooses whom to lend to. After lending, the class can periodically receive updates about the entrepreneur they have funded through journal entries from Kiva fellows in the field or by checking the website to see how the entrepreneur and loan are doing.This introduction to the Kiva website often sparks interest from students who might even become Kiva lenders themselves. The course also requires a certain number of “political participation” points for their course grade and lending on Kiva is one of many menu options.
Since Kiva operates in 48 different countries, the role of translation is vital to its operations. The mission of Kiva is to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty, and Kiva’s team of 400+ volunteer translators and editors are key to enabling this connection. This dedicated volunteer corps knows that, without their help, entrepreneurs’ loan profiles could get “lost in translation,” and so they work diligently to translate thousands of loans per month.
Professors of foreign language can integrate Kiva into their curriculum in a couple of ways:
- Practice Exercises: As grammar and translation practice (or even extra credit), professors may instruct their students to translate loan profiles which have been posted on the Kiva site. After translating the selection, students may check their own version against their classmates’ translations, or against the translated version already on the website. Try this in pairs or in small groups. This is a valuable exercise in translating real-world texts of a general nature, with local vocabulary that often requires some brief investigation online. Seeing multiple versions of a translation can provide good inspiration for discussion, and working with locally-written texts by a variety of writers can motivate students to work on deep comprehension and fine-tuning their writing skills in English. This exercise also offers students the opportunity to learn about the culture, people, and region of the language studied.
- Journal Translation: Kiva’s website features Journals, which are updates on loans with repayments currently being made or just completed. These provide Kiva Lenders views into the loan’s impact on the borrower’s family, business, or community. Kiva does not currently provide translations for journal entries, but does provide the ability to add a blog-style comment below each entry. By contributing translations of journal entries, your students can add to the translated content available on the site, and provide valuable insight to Kiva Lenders who may not speak the language in which the journal entry was posted.
- Volunteer Translation Program: For professors looking to develop a volunteer-based relationship with Kiva. Due to Kiva’s small staff, volunteers with the program must meet minimum availability requirements, which can be difficult for a classroom project. Professors leading classrooms in volunteer translation for Kiva must also provide ongoing supervision and review all loans posted by students to the site. If you and your students love translating Kiva loan profiles, and you would like to be involved on an ongoing basis, you can learn more at: http://www.kiva.org/about/translationFAQ . In your application, be sure to note that you learned about Kiva’s translation opportunities through the Professor Resource Guide and tell us about how you plan to structure your classroom’s involvement.
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Resources
Here are some resources that can help you and your students learn more about microfinance. We also encourage you to use them as a supplement to your curriculum. If you have any suggestions for this list, please send them to Campus Kiva.
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General Microfinance
Muhammad Yunus – Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty
Jeffrey Sachs – The End of Poverty
Beatriz Armendariz and Jonathan Morduch – The Economics of Microfinance
Paul Collier – The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It
Amartya Sen – Development as Freedom
William Cunningham and Mary Ann Cunningham – Environmental Science: A Global Concern
David Bornstein – The Price of a Dream: The Story of the Grameen Bank and the Idea that is Helping the Poor Change Their Lives
Alex Counts – Small Loans, Big Dreams
Management, Economics, and Business
Asif Dowla – The Poor Always Pay Back: The Grameen II Story
Muhammad Yunus – Creating a World without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism
C.K. Prahalad – The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty through Profits
Critiques of Microfinance
What’s Wrong with Microfinance? edited by Thomas Dichter and Malcolm Harper (Practical Action, 2007) – Is microfinance really a step on the road to economic growth, or is it a short-term palliative, keeping poor people poor?
“What Microloans Miss” by James Surowiecki New Yorker (March 17, 2008)
“Microfinance Misses Its Mark” by Aneel Karnani Stanford Innovation Review (Summer 2007)
About Kiva – More information about Kiva.
Learn about Microfinance – More information on microfinance courtesy of the Kiva website.
Microcredit Summit Campaign – Group that organizes microfinance institutions and rigorously assesses the collective impact of microlending. Its annual report tracks the growth of microfinance and the effect it has on the world’s poorest.
Nicholas Kristof’s video op-ed – Introduction to microlending and Kiva.org.
“Banker to the Poor-Grameen” – Introduction to microlending and Grameen Bank. (ABC Australia)
Uganda: A Little Goes a Long Way – Story of one of the original Kiva loans to a woman in Uganda. (PBS Frontline World)
“Small Fortunes: Microcredit and the Future of Poverty”
Learn more at: PBS: Small Fortunes
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Special Thanks to our Contributors
This resource guide would not have been possible without the collaboration of a great group of caring and passionate professors and students. I would like to express my utmost gratitude to all of these esteemed individuals and recognize them here. I have also included their contact information for anyone seeking further explanation, advice, etc.
Jonathan Borden, co-founder African Ice. Contact Jonathan.
Robert Gailey, Associate Professor, Fermanian School of Business. Contact Robert.
Kelsey Walker, President. Contact Kelsey
Gumball Capital. Contact Gumball Capital.
Brett Johnson, Professor of Sociology, Luther College. Contact Brett.
Lindsey Lupo, Professor of Political Science Point, Loma Nazarene University. Contact Lindsey.
Drew Miller, Professor of Biology, Thomas University. Contact Drew.
