KIVA Loan Thirty-six

Lubomir lives in the village of Gladkovka with his wife and daughter. In his greenhouses, he grows early-season vegetables for sale. On 1 hectare of land, he annually grows 8,000 tomato plants, 2,000 cucumber plants, and 10 tonnes of potatoes. Lubomir has been a farmer for four years. His working capital totals about $10,000, while his take-home profit is approximately $650.

Lubomir needed a loan of $2,500 in order to purchase seeds, fertilizer, firewood and plastic film.

These additional funds are needed to perform timely maintenance on the greenhouses and to prepare properly for the spring season, so as to produce a good harvest.

Together several KIVA lenders loaned him the $2,500 he needed and now this obviously very hard working man can get on with his spring work.

Our 35th KIVA Loan

We have made our 35th KIVA loan.

42-year old Máxima lives south of Barranquilla, Colombia with her husband and their three children aged from 12 to 20 years. She was born in Bolívar Department. Together with her husband Máxima has a business selling fish and she also sells puddings. They use the income from these two jobs to support the household and would like to expand the businesses so they can earn more money and have a better life. As well, they wish to provide their children with a good education.

Máxima’s husband takes fish (bocachicos and mojarras) to distant neighbourhoods and sells them door to door, while Máxima sells from the house. Her customers are families who live nearby. Her husband buys from the market and sells strictly on account.

Their customer base has grown because people recognise the freshness of their product, so they now need more money to buy more fish. Up until now they have been able to finance this themselves. Now Máxima is asking for a loan, the first she’s had from the Mario Santo Domingo Foundation, to buy fish. She also earns money from the sale of little puddings which she sells from her house. She alternates between selling fish and selling puddings so as to earn money.

Yorn in Cambodia - KIVA Loan for Dec

Yorn, on the far left in this picture, is 43 years old, and lives in Cambodia. She has three children who work for other people grinding corn. Yorn's family doesn't have an easy life. For more than ten years, Yorn's main income source has been growing corn. In order to feed her children she must sometimes also work for others.

Yorn leads a group of four female members applying for their first loan from KIVA. She will use her loan to buy agricultural tools such as hoes and a plow for her farm work. Having sufficient tools will allow her to increase the amount of corn she is able to grow. Through increased production she hopes to be able to better feed her children.

This is our 32nd KIVA loan, and our small fund of about $150.00 spent over two and a half years has enabled 32 people in disadvantaged circumstances to invest in themselves and their businesses. In those 32 loans only one has not been repaid, and that was because a typhoon wiped out the village where our borrower lived.

As the loans are repaid, on a regular schedule, the money is available to reinvest, or to withdraw if you decide to leave the program. We follow our borrowers each month, and it's always good to read a report that their goal of increasing their income and improving their families lives has been reached, in part because we shared our pensioner's mite.

October KIVA Loan

Though we've made at least one, and sometimes two KIVA loans each month, I've been negligent in posting them recently. But I shouldn't be. I hope by seeing what a difference loaning even a small amount of money can make to the life of a hard-working person somewhere else my readers will be encouraged to think about loaning to a Third World business person.

This is our 30th KIVA loan and it goes to Dilbar, a widow who is the loving mother of two children, a daughter and a son. Dilbar lives in Tajikistan, a country with a captivating Silk Road history and a rich cultural heritage. It is also the poorest of the former Soviet republics. A mountainous state where only six percent of the land is arable, its economy was damaged by a destructive 1990s civil war from which it is still recovering.

Dilbar is smart and hard-working. She is a farmer who primarily grows wheat, which yields her a good income, and she also raises livestock. She asked for a loan of $1500 to have capital to buy mineral fertilizers, wheat seeds and livestock to expand her business. She wants to increase her income so she can provide a nice wedding for her daughter.

May KIVA Loan

Our KIVA loan this month goes to Doreen of Hoima Uganda, who 41 years old. Doreen is married with seven children aged five to 21 years old, and a dependent grandchild. Her husband is a driver. Her goal is to educate her children and see them able to sustain themselves.

Doreen has operated a produce business for five years. She started by growing tobacco and then changed to her current business selling maize. She faces a challenge due to the maize business being seasonal. She wants to diversify into selling beans and groundnuts.

This is our 25th KIVA loan, and we're pleased to be able to help Doreen and other hard-working small business people around the world achieve their goals and provide better living conditions and futures for their families.

Thank you KIVA, for giving us this opportunity!

KIVA Loan for October

Our October KIVA loan goes to a Peruvian woman, Asunta Inca De Cusi. Asunta is 63 years old, married, and has 3 children. She belongs to the communal bank, Nueva Victoria – Chinchero in the province of Urubamba and the department of Cusco, located 45 minutes from the city.


Asunta has a grocery store and will use her loan to set up her store and purchase items for resale at wholesale price. She is requesting the loan to purchase rice, oil, and milk, among other products. She appreciates the loan and promises to make her payments on time. 


This is our 18th loan through KIVA, and all our active loans are being repaid on time. To this point we've never had a borrower default on a loan. KIVA makes it easy to make a positive difference in someone else's life.

Our KIVA Loan for July

Ahon Sa Hirap, Inc. is the oldest existing micro-credit organization in the Philippines. In the Native language of the Philippines Ahon Sa Hirap means “to rise above poverty.” With more than a third of the nation’s 90 million Filipinos living below the poverty line, ASHI was established with the vision of helping to alleviate poverty in the Philippines.

Dedicating to empowering women, ASHI lends only to women and specifically those in the lowest 50% of household income, so to the “poorest of the poor.” In addition to general business loans, ASHI also offers educational loans, house repair loans, savings funds, and social development programs for its members. ASHI is committed to translating its social mission into practice.

Evelyn Sandajan is 46 years old and lives in Hamtic, Antique, Philippines. She is a very humble woman who enjoys her life to the fullest despite her poverty.

When she became a mother, she was motivated to find a way to help support the family and educate the children so they could escape the poverty the family lives in. Her motivation has intensified and their eldest child is now in college, and the second has entered high school.

Through a field partnership with KIVA we joined with several other investors to lend Evelyn $400 which she will use to expand her business. She will repay the loan over time and we will reinvest the money as she repays it.

With determination to see her children graduate from college and improve their standard of living, Evelyn joined ASHI in 2003. The first loan she received was used to finance and grow a vegetable business. This kind of livelihood activity is the most common source of income of the many families in the village where Evelyn and her family live. Every day they go to different municipalities to market their products.

Evelyn works hard with her husband to bring home money to support the needs of their children. Given the opportunity to have larger amount of capital, Evelyn and her husband hope to make their business more stable and profitable. Through this, they will be able to educate their children until they are capable of living lives free from poverty.

KIVA Loan for May 2010

This month our KIVA loan goes to a group of six women living in Mali, Africa. This is loan number 11 for us, and we have now reached a point where the repayments coming back from each person we have lent to underwrites the entire new loan. KIVA loans enable even those of limited means to reach out and have a positive impact on the world. With a $25 dollar loan you can help lift a whole group of hard-working people out of poverty. Our $25 is not much, but when combined with $25 from 10 to 50 other people it makes a big difference to the mothers in Africa, enabling them to improve their family's diet, send their children to school, and provide them a more secure future.

The Women are: Dado Bouaré , Awa Traoré , Bah Traoré , Mariam Traoré, Tété Diallo and Oumou Coulibaly.

The Tientigui group is made up of six married women who live in monogamous families. They average 39 years of age and have an average of five children each. They all live in the Darsalam district of Ségou, Mali and met through neighbours and marriage.

The members of this group trade in fodder (food for livestock), tomatoes, children's clothing and calabashes (vines which can be dried out to be used as bottles or utensils). They work well together as a borrowing group, and this is their fourth group loan.

In the picture you see Mrs. Mariam Traoré holding one of her decorative calabashes. Mrs. Traoré buys and sells decorative articles, and is planning to use her loan to buy 200 calabashes. She gets her supply of calabashes in Tona and Konodimini.

She peels the calabashes and engraves them with small figures or designs, in the traditional method of her community. The finished calabashes are resold to order to newly married couples, and sometimes on a door-to-door basis to both men and women in the various neighborhoods. Mrs. Traoré hopes, along with the other members of the group, to make an average monthly profit equal to about $54.00 USD, part of which will be invested in their businesses, part will go for savings, and part of which will be used to repay their loan.

KIVA Loan for February

Not far from Naryn, a beautiful town in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan, there is a little village, Kochkor, which is famous for its salt. Here lives Tursun Smanova, the leader of her borrowing group of four people.

And it is to Tursun and her three friends that we make our KIVA loan this month. We'd had some unexpected (large) expenses in January, and money is not falling from our pockets as we walk along, but I had a book order, which will offset the loan. So we loan away!

Tursun is a 64-year-old widow. She lost her husband 10 years ago; however, she has raised two children by herself. Her daughter is 12 and she goes to the local school. Her son graduated from the university and now helps his mother fatten and then sell sheep.

About 10 years ago after her husband's death she decided she could not just give up the future of her children and let life decide what to do with them. So she bought five lambs to fatten and sell. She was successful and now continues in that business. Now she and her son earn about $113 per month. Their lives are better than before and she is planning to expand her business and buy a car in the future. She asked for a loan of about $112 which she will use to buy more lambs.

The second member of the group is Asel Alapaeva. She is 40 years old and married. She has a daughter who is 11 and in fourth grade. Her son who is 10 years old is in third grade. Her husband works as a builder whose salary per month is $115.00. About six years ago, she started a little business where she sells cattle in the local market. They are building a new house, which will be finished in the future. However, they want get a loan to buy four calves to raise as breeding stock, because cattle sell well in the market right now.

The third group member is Elmira Andagulova. She is 45 and has a daughter who is 16. Her daughter helps her mother after school. Her husband works as a builder and earns $115.00 per month. Seven years ago, Elmira began a business. She sells staple foods, products that are used daily. Her profit is about $150.000 per month. Her business is growing and the income has improved her family's well being. With her loan, she wants to buy 100 kg of sugar, different cereals, vegetable oil and other staple goods.

The fourth member of the group is Musa Kurmanov, a 56-year old man whose wife is on a pension. He began this business three years ago. He raises calves and sells them at the market, earning about $90.00 a month. He is going to expand his business by increasing the size of his herd. With the loan he wants to buy a bull.

In a group loan, members know each other well, and trust each other. Each member of the group receives an individual loan but is bound by a group guarantee. Under this arrangement members of the group support one another and are responsible for paying back the loans of their fellow group members if someone is delinquent or defaults.

This is our eighth KIVA loan, and all lenders are making their repayments on time. This means that each month the payments are put into our KIVA account, and we may choose to withdraw or reloan the money. To this point we have reloaned it as it has come back. So the money we loaned is being recycled as it were, and is going back out as new loans.

KIVA Investment for December

This month our KIVA investment is going to a group of five women in Fana Koulikoro, Mali, Africa. Their group is called Djekafo group of Yenkadi Association, and their names are Korotoumous Keita, Aminata Sidibe, Tenin Coulibaly, Kamissa Diarra and Naba Keita. They are either related or close neighbours. Their business is food production and sales.

The group members are all are married women, with an average age of 42 years and 4 children each. They live in big traditional families with their husbands and children in the village of Marka Counko in the Fana prefecture of Koulikoro region of the Republic of Mali.

They are on their third group loan and have repaid all preceding loans on time and in full. They plan to use this loan of $1,150.00 USD to buy food ingredients in bulk and to buy milk. They buy their ingredients locally which supports the region's economy, and they sell their products in the village market to other villagers. They expect to make an average monthly profit of 15,000 FCFA (appx $33.00 USD) each. Some profits are reinvested in the business and some go toward daily family expenses.

In a group loan, each member of the group receives an individual loan but is bound by a group guarantee. Members of the group support one another and all are responsible for paying back the loans of their fellow group members if someone is delinquent or defaults.

This is our fifth KIVA loan. Every month we look forward to choosing the person or group to support. It feels good to be able to help someone who otherwise might have a tough time climbing out of poverty.

Our October KIVA Investment

This month through KIVA we are investing in a young Samoan mother's business. Povalu Lova is a 25-year-old woman who lives in the town of Falseela Samoa. She is married and has a baby. Her main source of income comes from planting and harvesting taro for sale. Taro is a starchy tuber which is a staple food in the Pacific Islands. Povalu has been engaged in raising taro for less than one year and earns approximately 500 WST a month ($215 Canadian or $195 US).


A small loan in 2008 enabled Povalu to buy soil amendments to improve her field. She has paid that loan back and now has asked for a second loan to purchase gardening tools and supplies. She will use the money she earns to support her family and improve their living conditions.

KIVA allows individuals like us, who may only have a few dollars a month to spare, to pool funds with other micro-investors and provide loans to hard-working small business people around the world. As they repay their loans our investment will be returned to us, and we can invest it in another business, and thus help another person. Today a payment was made by the first person we lent money to, and it was credited to our account. We immediately put it back into circulation as part of the sum we lent to Povalu.

Unlike "aid" money handed over between governments, which often ends up in the pockets of corrupt politicians, this money goes directly to the borrower, where it is needed, and we feel privileged to be able to help. We are all connected.