Kiva Presentation at Hall High School

Fiona and I did our presentation on microfinancing today at my former high school. It went really well, especially considering we had to do our talk at 7:30 AM.

The Human Rights class we spoke to was mostly seniors, and they were a good group of kids. I was curious to hear what a bunch of suburban teenagers would think of microfinancing in general, and Kiva in particular. Most of them seemed pretty into the idea of loans as opposed to charity and I sensed a buzz when I explained how Kiva uses the internet to connect lenders with Africans. I think this is definitely a project that appeals to younger minds, and it appears that younger minds agree.

There were a couple of kids in the class who stood out. One of the students looked to be of Central or South American descent, and he was able to bring some personal experience to the conversation. He made a few comments about growing up in poverty and he said that even though his family and the people around him didn't have any money that didn't mean they didn't have ideas about how to get out of poverty. I would have like to've heard more from him, but we only had about 40 minutes and there just wasn't enough time.

Another kid was an extreme leftist kind of guy who was all about money being the root of all evil. To be honest, he reminded me of myself minus twelve years. He was very vocal (which was great) and he expressed a lot of skepticism that microfinancing could work, because in the end, he feared that entire villages would just wind up owing unpayable debts. Having him in the discussion was really cool because his statements needled some of the other students into speaking up. The only thing that would have been better would have been if there were a far-right counterpart saying that poor people should be responsible for themselves and not expect handouts, yadda yadda. For better or for worse, 17 year-olds with those views are pretty hard to come by, so we had to make due without hearing from the No Spin Zone.

The whole thing was a lot of fun. I think the students got a lot out of it - one girl came up to Fiona and I afterwards and said it was the best class she'd ever had. It was also a great opportunity for Fi and I to practice our schtick in front of a captive audience. One thing that was excellent was that we were able to do the whole presentation without talking over each other (a major accomplishment), and another was that we were able to use a lot of the classroom management techniques we learned when we did our ESL certification in Bangkok last year.

Finally, on the way out we spoke to a former teacher of mine who will be doing the Human Rights class next semester. Apparently, the class is structured such that each student is required to do a "social activism project". We didn't get into details, but we're both hoping that we'll be able to come up with a way to get some of the students involved with what we'll be doing in East Africa over the coming months. I'm really excited about it - it'll add a whole other dimension on to what will already be an extroardinarily cool experience.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 12, 2006 at 10:54 PM in Kiva/VEF | Permalink