From Mud Walls to Mechanical Looms
It really appears that most of my blog work will be concentrated on the official Kiva Fellows blog, which is good! I suggest checking it out almost daily. With close to 20 people living in that many countries around the world, there are bound to be interesting things to write about!
I’ve been in the office a lot during my fellowship working to bring Kiva to FODEMI. This blog is about some of my first ventures far, far away from the office to meet the people that drew me to this fellowship in the first place: the borrowers! I’ve been in their houses, drank their Nescafe, and have eaten bread with them. By far, it’s been the best part of the fellowship and something I’ll never forget.
Kind of like Betty (read the official blog to find out about her!):
http://fellowsblog.kiva.org/2011/07/08/mud-walls-to-mechanical-looms-borrowers%e2%80%99-stories/
First official blog!
Please check out my first official blog entry on the Kiva Fellows Blog!
WHY am I here?
It’s the weekend and I finally feel like I have gotten the opportunity to breathe. I have also gotten the chance to stop and reflect a bit on my first three weeks of my stay here in Ecuador.
It’s been a challenging time with high points and low but, overall, I love what I am doing and I love the reasons that I am here.
But I’m thinking WHY am I HERE? There are too many reasons to count. If you read my biography on the Meet the Fellows page at Kiva, you’ll see that the seed for the desire to travel to far-off places and do development work abroad was planted when I was about seven years old. I was a student at a small Catholic elementary school in Pennsylvania. My class (I believe we were in first grade), was led to the basement of the Old Church across the street from the school. Grades K-8 crowded into the church basement to hear the stories, see the pictures, and learn about the work of a visiting missionary who had worked in Papua New Guinea. I remember being fascinated by his pictures and loved learning a few words of Papua New Guinean Pidgin English. That’s how far back I can trace my path to where I am now and where I want it to take me in the future. It took about fifteen years for me to finally be able to take my first step down this path. It truly changed my life. It was an archaeology field trip to Belize and Guatemala. My intention when I enrolled in the class in the anthropology department (archaeology is one of American anthropology’s four main sub-fields that also include cultural anthropology, biological or physical anthropology, and linguistic anthropology) was to have an excuse to travel abroad. I didn’t know that I’d decide to change my life completely after the trip…but that’s what happened.
Belize and Guatemala opened my eyes to the world outside of Pennsylvania (I had never even left the eastern seaboard of the US when I first went abroad at the age of 20). I became an anthropology major (not the wisest choice as a college junior) and became extremely interested in Latin America. I loved (and continue to love) anthropology’s intent to see beyond the surface of things. The deep analysis of culture, politics, economics, and all other aspects of human life fascinates me. With the support of the Robert E. Cook Honors College (I’d not be who I am today without them!), I had the opportunity to explore parts of the world I’d only dreamed of previously. I took a two week trip across Italy to learn about Italian art, architecture, and culture. I began learning Spanish actively by living in northern Spain for two months. I spent a month in Peru doing my first research in anthropology (I researched indigenous Peruvians’ relationship with potatoes. Seriously. In Peru, potatoes and culture have a lot more connections than are readily apparent). I went to Mexico for two months to culminate my undergraduate education and investigated the economic conditions that spurred an extended family of undocumented migrant workers to take the risks involved in crossing the US-Mexican border and working for an undetermined amount of time on mushroom farms in Chester County, Pennsylvania. I mostly learned about the experience of the women and children the migrant workers leave behind and risk their lives to support. Figuring out the puzzles of why people do the things they do is one of the most thrilling things for me.
Since then, I entered a graduate program in anthropology in Dallas, Texas and have done research on economic conditions for women in the remote Bolivian Amazon. I was drawn to Kiva and microfinance through my past investigations into the social realities of economic decisions. I applied to become a Kiva Fellow in February 2011. I was accepted and sent here, to Ibarra, Ecuador, to work with a new field partner. I am dedicated to this work for Kiva but I am also here to build relationships within the organization and to meet the borrowers. I want to research or work with microfinance (or something similar) for my career. This Kiva Fellowship is a fantastic stepping stone to a life of doing work that I not only love but that I find important. I want to do something that matters to more than just me. Even if it only matters to one single person besides me, I’ll be satisfied.
I seriously love and support Kiva wholeheartedly. If you have $25 you won’t miss for a few months you can change a life. Even better, you’ll change a life AND get your money back. You can be a student, a parent, a CEO of a Fortune 500 company, or anyone else across the board and still make the same impact with a $25 loan. Please, join me and make a loan that will change lives — yours and the borrower’s! (e-mail me at megan.bond@fellows.kiva.org and I’ll send you a personal invite)!
A campaign related to Kiva called FITE (Financial Independence through Entrepreneurship) created this video to demonstrate the power of microfinance in a woman’s life. It’s worth watching. If this doesn’t move you to lend a small amount of money you likely won’t even miss, I don’t know what would. This represents a culmination of the values I learned in that church basement almost two decades ago and matches the hard work and determination I’ve seen in six countries in Latin America. And, as the daughter of an entrepreneur, I’ve seen the importance of the spirit of entrepreneurship and the importance of supporting small businesses (and celebrate their successes the world over)!
Visita Ibarra y Enamórate
Click this link if you’re interested in seeing Ibarra, the city I’ll be living in for the duration of my summer here in Ecuador. You’ll get to see some of the sights I witness daily. AND you’ll get to hear the voice of the quintessential Spanish-language announcer (think movie previews in English).
Want to visit? They say that Ibarra is the city that you’ll always return to.
Sickness. Deliriousness.
Maybe it was inevitable, but I got sick. And when I got sick, I fell hard into the sickness. It took everything out of me (quite literally, in fact). Yesterday, I had an IV drip for about eight hours to rid my body of the toxins unleashed by some sort of food poisoning. The worst part might be that I may never truly know what caused the sickness. It could be a combination of many things: food, water, altitude (higher than Denver!), motion sickness from Friday’s travels, or any other number of things.
After my IV, paying $8.70 for almost ten hours of treatment, and the overwhelming kindness of those taking care of me, I am on the mend. This is not to say that I am better. Oh, no, I feel far from it. I can barely find the energy to type this. I might (no, I will) have to lie down after taking a few minutes to update my 0-3 followers on this blog! With water, love, good food, prayer, kind thoughts, whatever you can send my way, I hope to be better soon!
The first week
It’s been a long — and exhausting — first week in the field! I’ve been working everyday for at least eight hours. Sometimes, my time at work extends to twelve hours. It is concurrently a draining and exhilarating experience. I’m starting a new job, meeting new people, and navigating a new world in a language that I have some skill in but, nonetheless, it feels new to live life in Spanish.
I enjoy not being a tourist. I haven’t felt like a tourist in a long time. I wasn’t a tourist when I did research in Mexico or Bolivia. Everywhere else, I felt just like a typical tourist. There to taste the “exotic,” take in the different, view the “other,” but not to contribute. I am striving to do the latter this time: setting up a new partnership, sharing skills and experiences, inter-exchanging sporadic language lessons, and training someone so that they can accomplish my work here when I’m gone in three months.
This experience, in my first week here, has been wonderful and terrifying. I’ve felt sick. I’ve felt welcomed. I’ve laughed and cried. I’m amazed, humbled, and inspired. It’s been encouraging and frightening. And I can’t wait to see what the rest may bring.
“You gain strength, courage, and confidence
by every experience in which you really stop
to look fear in the face.
You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.”
- Eleanor Roosevelt
The beginning: Hello, world!
Hello, world!
I am very excited to begin this blog about my journey as a Kiva Fellow in the Imbabura province of Ecuador. As an online microfinance organization, Kiva connects people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty. Kiva Fellows are individuals from many diverse backgrounds selected by a fantastic organization, Kiva.org, that empowers people all over the world to make a tangible contribution toward improving lives and livelihoods. Through this fellowship, I have the opportunity to pursue an interest in cultural exchange and international development that I can trace back to a visit from a Jesuit missionary working in Papua New Guinea in the first grade.
My task as a Kiva Fellow is to work with a completely new partner in northern Ecuador for three months, training the staff on how to implement the Kiva model at their MFI (microfinance institution). Most significantly, I will be facilitating connections between lenders and borrowers in many capacities. I will be blogging here, on my personal blog, as well as on the official Kiva Fellows blog . I will also be interviewing small business owners in Ecuador featured on Kiva and working with the MFI to post updates about the effects of micro-loans on their lives and well-being. Microfinance is a key career interest of mine and, because of my Fellowship, I get to pursue this interest first-hand while sharing my experience with those who share my passions (and maybe to also convince some skeptics along the way!).
The most fascinating facets of Kiva:
Kiva is unique! It is the only microfinance organization that allows individual lenders (like you and me) to lend directly to entrepreneurs who need a hand up in over sixty countries worldwide. Kiva’s reach is not limited to the developing world; in fact, there are currently three partner organizations of Kiva giving loans to entrepreneurs in the United States. Since its inception in 2005, Kiva has enabled lenders to send over $215 million to the working poor across the world, at home and abroad.
Kiva is not charity! Kiva lenders make 0% interest loans to entrepreneurs – small business owners that do not have access to conventional sources of capital or non-exploitative loans such as those available from loan sharks. Over the course of a year, entrepreneurs pay back the loans on a schedule. After entrepreneurs pay back the entire loan, Kiva lenders can retrieve their investment for personal use via Paypal, donate the amount to cover Kiva’s operational expenses, or they can re-invest the money into a new loan to a new entrepreneur. Please visit About Kiva to learn more about this incredible organization! Or leave a comment and I’ll send you an invitation to join today! Do you have $25 you won’t miss for a few months? Invest it! Help to change the lives of strangers and in the process, you’ll change your own.
The Kiva Fellowship:
The Kiva Fellowship program has a huge reach and attracts a variety of people from different walks of life that all share common passions for travel, international development, cultural experiences, and Kiva! Although the Fellowship is unpaid and volunteer-based it is still competitive and the application process rigorous. The rigor is necessary because as Kiva Fellows we act as the “eyes and ears” of Kiva on the ground, ensuring the transparency and efficiency that lenders have come to appreciate and expect.
My 15th class of Fellows alone, whom I had the immense pleasure of meeting in person in San Francisco for a week of orientation and training, will be traveling to work with MFIs partnered with Kiva in twenty-two countries.
In the Americas, fellows will be working in Ecuador, Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. In Asia, fellows will assist MFIs in Indonesia, Cambodia, Philippines, Lebanon, Jordan, and Kyrgyzstan. Our greatest reach and impact for the 15th class of Kiva Fellows will be in Africa where Fellows will be sent to Liberia, Cameroon, Togo, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Uganda, and Senegal.
Check out official updates from all of us on the Kiva Fellows blog! Or follow us on Twitter: @kivafellows
I start my first official day at my MFI tomorrow. I am looking forward to this experience and will keep you updated! Thanks for visiting!
