Wednesday, 07 June 2006

A Return to Blogging?

It's been a long time since my last update - almost a month and a half. It's hard to believe that so much time has passed, but there it is in plain sight. I've been so busy trying to get Kiva together that I really haven't had time for anything else. I've never felt so singularly dedicated to anything before. It's a great feeling, but sometimes I'm afraid I'll burn out. You can only work so many 15 hour days in a row.

The past few months have been really exciting. It's amazing for me to look at the Kiva website. So many things go through my mind - we've enabled well over $100,000 in loans to 9 different countries. That's a lot of money in America, let alone in Honduras or Cambodia or Uganda. Incredible to think about all the repercussions that money will have for years to come.

As for me, my skills have grown exponentially. I've done more in the past five months with Kiva than I did in two and a half years at a certain unnamed government organization where I used to work. My latest triumph has been the creation of a banner that people can post on their websites to promote Kiva businesses. You can see it in action over on the right.

Basically, I wrote a bunch of PHP code that generates some javascript code. Then, the javascript generates HTML that's wrapped up in CSS so that it formats correctly. All this is pretty much transparent to anyone who wants to use the banner on their site - for the end user, the banner on the right is produced by including one line of code in a web page:

<SCRIPT type='text/javascript' src='http://www.kiva.org/banners/bannerTower.php'></SCRIPT>

That's pretty damn cool, if I may say so myself. And if you had asked me to do it a year ago you would have gotten a blank stare. Not anymore though. I've rediscovered why I got into this field in the first place, and it's great to feel so inspired.

If I may be so bold as to quote one of my personal tech heroes:

"yes i love technology, but not as much as you, you see, but still i love technology, always and forever...."
- Kip Dynamite

Posted by flow Frazao on June 7, 2006 at 05:03 AM in Kiva/VEF | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Tuesday, 18 April 2006

The Great Kiva Migration pt. 2 - Transition

I am exhausted.

For the past week I've been staying up until 5AM writing code and getting an architectural framework in place so that Kiva's development can continue to scale. Matt and I have done so much work it's hard to even remember what we've accomplished. Here's a short list that is by no means complete:

• Switched our version control tool from CVS to Subversion
  
• Set up a new set of domains at Dreamhost (our most excellent hosting service)
  
• Migrated the database to a new schema that could definitely beat up the old one
  
• Fixed about 100 bugs
  
• Ate Zante's Indian pizza and drank a lot of beer

Tomorrow afternoon Fiona, Matt, Premal and I are heading down to LA for USC's Microfinance and Beyond conference. I wasn't going to go - I'm still pretty nervous about the new website and I was going to hang back in case of emergency - but Fiona and Matt talked me into it. The lineup is really good too. Pretty much all of the big names will be there (including rockstar microfinancier Muhammad Yunus).

We're going to make the seven hour drive for what I'm sure will be a great conference, but the whole time I'll just be silently praying that the new website doesn't break. Wish me luck.

Posted by flow Frazao on April 18, 2006 at 12:39 AM in Kiva/VEF | Permalink | Comments (1)

Friday, 07 April 2006

The Great Kiva Migration pt. 1 - Coming Up For Air

Wow. It's been a while since my last posting. I've been so supremely focused on dominating the new Kiva website that I've forgotten the most important thing in the world - blogging. I've also forgotten less important things like personal hygiene, basic nutrition and keeping in contact with people (sorry!!). Somehow my life has become totally absorbed by things like HTML tables and PHP magic quotes. It's crazy to think that I was this close to having been in East Africa right now instead of in a rented room in San Francisco.

For the past two months, we've been working our asses off on rewriting all of Kiva's code from the ground up. I can't remember the last time I went to bed before 5AM - not that I'm complaining - code is meant to be written by moonlight, and anyone who says differently is a punk who doesn't know a class from an object. By now, Carl's left for Uganda (according to my watch he's just landed in Dubai), and Matt and I are left to switch the site from the old version to the new one.

Neither of us has ever done anything like this. Basically, here's what the switch entails:

1. Disable logins on the website and logout all the current users
   
2. Put a warm and polite "Kiva is down for maintenance" message on the old server (where the URL 'www.kiva.org' is currently pointing)
   
3. Write a massive SQL script that will import all the info from the old database into the new one. The current Kiva database has 16 tables, and the new one has 27. I'm a little nervous about this part because between the two of us I am the most experienced at SQL. That's scary, cause I don't know shit.
   
4. Pull all the new code onto the new server and sanity check it by logging in and testing the crap out of all the new features.
   
5. Redirect the URL 'www.kiva.org' to point to the new server. This is called a 'DNS Change', and it usually takes between 48 hours for all the servers to be updated with the new information. The effect of which is that when you type the address into your browser there's no way of knowing whether or not you'll get the new site or the old one - it all depends on which servers your request gets bounced around by. During that time, Kiva will remain down.
   
6. Drink beer, watch ultimate fighting, eat Indian pizza, and pray.

Hopefully by Monday the new site will be up. Don't get excited though - the stuff you'll see will remain largely the same. You probably won't even notice any differences. This version is primarily focused on functionality for Kiva's partners (i.e. the people in Africa/C. America/E. Europe/etc who will be posting the businesses).

I'm both really excited and really nervous about this. If it works, it'll be awesome - our partners will have total control over the businesses that Kiva users will be lending to. However, if it bombs/is mad buggy it'll be like I've spent months training for the Octagon only to lose the fight because of a strategic error like allowing myself to get caught in a figure-four leglock.

Posted by flow Frazao on April 7, 2006 at 07:43 PM in Kiva/VEF | Permalink | Comments (0)

Friday, 24 March 2006

Kiva's Contact Us Emails

We have a web form on the Kiva site where people can submit questions, comments, etc. Every morning I wake up to three or four emails, and they're always a good read. Usually they're either from students asking for internships or they're from existing microfinancing institutions asking about becoming a Kiva partner.

But every now and then we get an impassioned plea from someone in a rough situation. Sadly, we can't really help them because we don't have the means to loan to individuals yet. Maybe someday we'll be able to, but right now it's just not possible.

However, a couple of days ago we received my favorite "Contact Us" email so far:

> Name: sunday.c.egun
> Phone: +23***********
> .................
> Comments: Dear Sir,
>
> I need a loan.

Posted by flow Frazao on March 24, 2006 at 03:53 PM in Kiva/VEF | Permalink | Comments (2)

Thursday, 23 March 2006

Kiva Update

It's been a while since I've updated the site. I've been crazy busy with Kiva, and things are going great. We've rewritten pretty much the entire code base, so when we put the new version up in a few weeks it'll be almost all new. It won't look a lot different but it's totally solid, and it'll provide the foundation for a lot of cool new features over the coming months.

Yesterday we signed up a new partner called Life in Africa. I would say they're my favorite so far. A lot of the businesses I posted yesterday are for Ugandans living in displaced persons camps - one was for a water tap business:

Ocola Julius is 52 years old and is married with 5 children. He is Acholi and is one of the many thousands of people who were forced to flee their homes in the North because of the war that has been going on for the last 20 years. His family lives in an Internally Displaced People's camp in the outskirts of Kampala called the Acholi Quarter. Six months ago Julius joined Life in Africa and has been an active member ever since. He started as a bracelet maker in the Invisible Children Bracelet Project but his hard work and determination quickly earned him a promotion to a sanding processor.

He has acquired a piece of land from the King of Buganda who has sympathy for the people of Acholi and who has set aside free land for them. Knowing that the people of the Acholi quarter have to go long distances to look for water, he has a plan to install a water tap on his land. The current water sellers who bring water in to this hilltop area are charging five shillings per litre for water which makes it very hard for the people to purchase water for their needs. With a water tap installed on his land, Julius will be able to purchase water for only one shilling per litre and he plans on selling this water for a reduced rate of 3 shillings per litre to his community.

Not only will this provide a steady income for his family needs, but it will also offer a valuable service to his community at a more affordable price than they can currently get. This will insure that he has a secure source of buyers for his water, and it is likely to have a great impact on those living in the Acholi quarters.

To accomplish this project, Julius is seeking a loan in the amount of shs. 800,000 ($475). He es-timates that once he acquires this loan it will take approximately one week to have the water tap installed. Below is his budget:

16 metal pipes @ 12000= each =192000=
connection fee to national water=300000=
labor charges & other expenses =200000=
building of small house so that the tap can be locked to avoid theft =100000=
The whole total is 792000=.

Based on his current income, Julius will be able to repay this loan in 12 months. Julius loves music and dance, and has designated the community impact portion of the interest he pays to support Life in Africa's Talent Discovery program.

1. Running a water tap is a viable business idea in a third-world country. I'm not sure why I'm surprised by this, but it just seems strange. But I guess there'll always be a market for water.
   
2. There are people in Uganda who will be drinking clean water because of code we wrote. To me this is the only thing that really matters, and it's the entire reason I came out here in the first place.

I predict that these businesses will all be funded by the end of the day. One thing we've noticed at Kiva is that the African businesses go like crazy, whereas our Central American businesses usually take a week to raise the capital. There are a lot of trends that are starting to become evident now that we've got a more diverse portfolio, and it's interesting to notice the patterns.

Posted by flow Frazao on March 23, 2006 at 12:48 PM in Kiva/VEF | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wednesday, 01 March 2006

Kiva Updates From Uganda

In case you're not tuned in to the political situation of Uganda, they just had an election a few days ago. There was a lot of angst about it since it was the first free election in 20-some years.

That combined with the terrible drought that's been going on for the past two years and the intermittent (at best) electricity situation had us pretty worried about our people in East Africa. About three weeks ago we received the following email from our Ugandan partner Moses:

Hello Matt,
This is to inform you that our work is not going to be possible for very long time because of luck of electric power.
The Goverment has announced that due to the low water level in the lake, the power generation has gone very low. For this reason power will be switched off at 6am to 7pm every day.
This has now made all offices to buy their own generators.
For Kiva office, we are in dilema.
Moses.

Since most of our current businesses are operating in Uganda, Matt decided to send Moses money to buy a new generator. That way Kiva users would still be able to recieve updates as to the progress of their businesses.

Then, just before the election we got this letter from Moses:

Hi Matt,
This is to inform you that we have not bought the generator yet because of the total confusion here in Uganda due to the forth coming presidential elections.
There is rampant killings during the campaigns and threteaning violence.
This has caused almost all the business communities to run across to Kenya to wait for us to go through the elections.
Most of all the shops are closed and the prices of commodities have been hiked very much.
We are voting on Thursday this week. We hope to buy the generator after the elections.
Thanks,
Moses.

Hello Matt,
This is some few hints of the recent presidential election in Uganda.
President Yower Museveni was declared the winner with 59.96% and the runner up from the FDC party got 39 percent.
Generally right now the FDC party is going to court for they complaint of mass rigging and intimidation of their voters.
Number of FDC voters were put in jail before the election and some were killed by gunmen who are believed to be the supporters of President Yower Museven.
Before thinking of taking the court action, the FDC big shots wanted the re counting of the ballot pappers but the Goverment has refused to allow the re count to be done.
Two days before the election day, soldiers were deployed all over Uganda even deep in the villages to frustrate the campaigns of the opposition.
Generally, the opposition parties feel that the election wasen't free and fair.
The elected president will be sworn in as the new elected president of the Republic Of Uganda in May 2006.
This will all happen if the court does not nulify the election results.
For me as a person, Im very safe and I have not been affected in any way both during the time of campaign and even after the election.
I have received the most recent report that all our beneficiaries of Kiva were not affected in any way. Im rejoicing together with my family.
Im now working very hard for Kiva because we want to catch up with the time that was wasted during the fear of the campaign violence.
I want to thank all of you who prayed for us and all the people of Uganda.
Matt, this is the brief content that I can give you concerning our presidential election.
Every blessings,
Moses.

Posted by flow Frazao on March 1, 2006 at 08:02 PM in Africa, Kiva/VEF | Permalink | Comments (0)

Saturday, 25 February 2006

Weekend Update

I'm absolutely exhausted, and I've promised myself a day off today. However, it's been a long time since I've written an update so I'll just fire off a few quick thoughts.

Fiona and I have been working pretty hard for the last few weeks. I've been writing a lot of code, which is great because it'd been a long time since I'd done any serious geeking out. I never thought I'd say it, but I really missed programming. We're redoing the entire Kiva site from the ground up, and it's been a lot of fun to just zone out and build cool stuff.

Fi's been working on getting a comprehensive database of every Microfinancing Institution in the galaxy. I think right now she's got an excel spreadsheet with like 5000 MFI's on it or something. If we could get even one percent of them to partner with Kiva we'd be all set.

Yesterday we posted another 17 businesses online, and they're almost all funded already. We didn't send out a notification email this time - we were actually hoping to keep them on the site for a while - but people just come out of the woodwork. I'm not surprised though. This batch of businesses was especially dope. I mean, what's a better investment than a Honduran Cheesemaker? Talk about a sure thing.

Like I said, I've been pretty tired today. I wanted to go for a walk, but Fiona took the keys so I'm stuck inside doing pushups and posting to my blog like a little bitch. I was really hoping to get through the day without doing any computer stuff, but now that I'm looking at the Kiva site I find myself wanting to knock off some code. It's just crazy that I can sit here looking at all these pictures of small business owners all over the world and help them and their families just by writing a bit of PHP.

Now that I'm thinking about it, it's kind of strange. Seeing these barbers and cheesemakers and chokeberry farmers fills me with energy even when I think I'm totally wiped out. It really is inspiring. I've never felt like this about anything else I've ever done, and for the first time in my life I'm really proud of what I'm doing. It's a great feeling.

Posted by flow Frazao on February 25, 2006 at 07:52 PM in Kiva/VEF | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Thursday, 16 February 2006

Busy Busy Busy

Sorry about the light posting recently. I've been really busy not shooting people in the face.

Things with Kiva are going great. A few days ago Fiona and I sat down and had a talk with Matt Flannery (Kiva's Founder - read his blog here). Since our overall objective is to end global poverty (we aim high) the question has become a matter of how Fi and I can best affect the changes that need to happen in order to achieve that goal. Originally, we were planning on going to Africa in order to get poor Africans listed on Kiva's site, but we decided that right now the best way we can help Kiva is not by going to Africa but by staying out here a bit longer and working on server-side PHP implentation (for me) and going on a marketing blitz to sign up new Microfinancing organizations (for fiona).

So we've extended our stay in San Francisco for about a month. Luckily for us we've been blessed by a lot of people who have offered to put us up while we're working here. Right now we're staying in Palo Alto with Premal, a really great guy who's committed to pulling some major strings for Kiva. I'm not going to get into details, but if Premal can work some magic then it would truly be a hell of a thing.

Over the past week a lot has happened. I don't have a whole lot of time for proper writing, but here's a quick recap:

We signed up our first new partners on Kiva:

• The Shurush Initiative: Founded in 2003 and incorporated in 2004, The Shurush Initiative is a 501(c)(3) non-profit charity organization dedicated to improving the grave economic situation in the West Bank and Gaza through transparent microfinance and proactive employment.
• REDC Bulgaria: This organization currently focuses its efforts in and around Sliven, Bulgaria. However, through their parternship with the US Peace Corps, REDC will be able to lend efficiently to small businesses in 113 locales by leveraging the Peace Corps’ network of 178 volunteers.
• CRESP Senegal: In affiliation with CRESP in Ithaca, New York, the Senegal Ecovillage Network (GENSEN) facilitates this microcredit program for its network of 32 member villages. Committed to developing communities that are environmentally, economically and culturally sustainable, the ecovillages seek to combine the best of the past with appropriate modern technology.
• Prisma Microfinance: Prisma Microfinance, Inc. is a microfinance institution which provides micro-loans internationally, helping to alleviate poverty while providing a return to investors. Microfinance services are targeted to low and moderate income businesses and households including the provision of credit for micro-loans. (Prisma is HUGE, btw).

Instead of being focused in East Africa, now Kiva is funding entrepreneurs on three different continents. Not only is this just plain cool to say, it also means that Kiva is a lot more stable. For example, right now there's an energy crisis in Uganda which is where Kiva was conducting the vast majority of it's lending. This could have jeopardized Kiva's entire "portfolio", but now that our loans are spread out over the globe we're less likely to be affected by regional disasters.

Another amazing thing that happened is that two of Matt's childhood friends found out that they were awarded a $45,000 grant from Microsoft to help Kiva expand in the developing world! Obviously, this is incredible news, and it's opened my eyes up to some similar ideas for Fiona and I. It hadn't really occurred to me that it'd be possible to fund ourselves through grants and whatnot, but now I'm really starting to think about it. I mean, it's great to be here working with Kiva, but it'd be a whole lot better if we could turn this into a sustainable lifestyle. I've got so many ideas for where we could take Kiva that it'd be a shame to walk away from it in a few months without having explored all the options.

The last thing I'm going to mention (and trust me when I say I'm forgetting tons of stuff), is that a few days ago Fiona called the UN Microfinance Summit Campaign to ask them if they could send us their list of Microfinancing organizations and they were like "Oh, Kiva? Yeah, we think you guys are great. We've been sending everybody to your site."

The United Nations. I mean, holy shit.

Posted by flow Frazao on February 16, 2006 at 02:08 PM in Kiva/VEF, Microfinancing | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wednesday, 15 February 2006

Kiva on NPR and BBC

Kiva's going to be on NPR during a segment in The World (BBC) today. Check here to see program times for your area.

Being an ardent lawbreaker, I'll post the podcast/mp3 here when it becomes available so that you can all listen in and share in the Kiva Delights.

Update: As promised, here's the Kiva segment. How cool is that!!

Posted by flow Frazao on February 15, 2006 at 01:54 PM in Kiva/VEF | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Thursday, 09 February 2006

New Kiva Businesses

It's 5:30 AM and I'm exhausted, but what I can’t believe what I’m seeing and I wanted to tell you guys what’s going on.

Today Kiva formally announced our first four partnerships with real, full-fledged microfinancing institutions. Each one sent us five new entrepreneurs to list on the site, and we finished putting their profiles online about five hours ago. We've got 20 businesses from three different continents - everything from a Bulgarian chokeberry farmer to a Palestinian carpenter to a group of Senegalese women using solar cookers for seafood preparation.

We just finished posting these businesses at midnight and there's about $10,000 that needs to be raised. Matt (Kiva’s founder) said he expected it to take two weeks to get the money together, and I told him he was out of his mind. I predicted that all the businesses on the site would be funded within 24 hours, and it looks like it may be more like 8 hours. I don't even know how people are finding out about it this fast, because we just finished sending out the notification emails a few minutes ago. I mean, Fiona went to bed about four hours ago and she’s going to wake up to find every single new business funded. She’s going to freak out.

I can’t even imagine what the microfinancing organizations and the newly funded entrepreneurs are going to do. They’re going to go ballistic.

This is seriously unbelievable. I’ve actually got the shakes. I don't think I've ever heard of anyone else raising this much money this fast online for a charitable cause. I'm going to go try to get some sleep, but if you want to nab a Kiva business you'd better be quick about it.

By the way, in the time it took me to write this people have loaned $550.

This is gonna be big.

Posted by flow Frazao on February 9, 2006 at 08:17 AM in Kiva/VEF | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Friday, 03 February 2006

First Things First

Yesterday we got our Kiva business cards printed up:

And if that's not enough, today Jessica (Kiva co-founder) is meeting with the President of Tanzania.

Posted by flow Frazao on February 3, 2006 at 03:51 PM in Kiva/VEF | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

TCOB In Africa

Not much time to get into detail, but here's a preliminary list of things we'll be doing in East Africa:

• Conducting Impact Studies for VEF to determine how grant recipients lives have changed following a VEF grant.
• Finding existing microfinancing organizations to partner with Kiva.
• Evaluating the VEF database interface to see why Country Officers in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda aren't putting information into the DB. I'll be training them on proper use of the interface and hopefully will be able to put together a solution for whatever problem it is that they're encountering.
• Explore the potential for a partnership between VEF and Kiva. Basically, VEF gives grants to the poorest of the poor, and the hope is that many of them have "graduated" to the point where they might be good candidates for Kiva loans.
• Take a look at what, if any, information sharing/collective learning occurs between entrepreneurs.

I know there's more I'm forgetting, and I'm sure we'll come up with more stuff next week, but that's a little sumpin sumpin for now.

Posted by flow Frazao on February 3, 2006 at 03:34 PM in Africa, Kiva/VEF | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Dinner At Brian's

Wow.

Wow wow wow wow wow.

It's been a big week, and my head is spinning with ideas. I'm not even sure where to start.

Sunday night Fiona and I went to dinner at VEF founder Brian Lehnen's house. We were pretty nervous because we'd only talked to Brian a few times, and we wanted to make a good impression. We also had no idea what to expect. We didn't know who'd be there or anything.

Naturally, we started joking around during the train ride down to San Carlos. Being a veritable connoisseur of awkwardness, I tried to come up with uncomfortable scenarios. I told Fiona that as soon as I saw Brian I'd walk up to him and give him a huge hug - really tight - and not let go for 45 seconds. Just make it really long and weird.

Of course, I didn't do that at all. Brian met us at the train station and there was your usual round of handshaking and whatnot. Then the three of us piled into the car and went to his house.

We walked in the front door into a room full of people. One guy, whom I immediately recognized as the founder of Kiva, yelled "Jeremy! I feel like I know this guy!". Then he came over and gave me a hug! It was really funny and cool, although it wasn't as uncomfortably awkward as I would have liked.

Matt's wife Jessica also bounded over to us and freely dispensed some love. It was a great reception, and it made me feel right at home. I'd felt a real connection with Matt during our phone conversations, and it turned out I was right. These are our people.

Then we started talking with the other people who were there. One of them was a guy who I'm not going to name quite yet who's one of the higher-ups at an extremely large and well-known company. Hopefully Kiva will be partnering with this company, and if this happens it would be huge in both financial terms and in terms of legitimacy. But more on that in time.

The other guy who was there was an unassuming, cool looking guy named Carl. After some prodding by Jessica, Carl told us his story. In the early 90s he was a special-ed teacher for disabled kids. He wanted to try to get them using computers, but there wasn't really any software that was appropriate so he decided to make his own. He went and downloaded this new thing called "Java" that had just been pre-released, and it all snowballed from there. Soon he was getting emails from people asking him questions about the new programming language, and he'd answer them to the best of his ability, the whole time thinking "I wonder when they'll realize that I'm just a teacher". Eventually he wound up sitting at Sun Microsystem's headquarters with James Gosling (the inventor of Java - I've read his books!) who asked him what it would take for Carl to come work for Sun. Carl threw out a number (which he later learned was embarrassingly low) and they hired him on the spot. The rest, as they say, is history.

Fast forward 15 years to find Matt and Carl working together at TiVo. Matt recently quit to concentrate on Kiva full time, and Carl - one of the first Java programmers in the world - has also joined Kiva full time. Except Carl's going balls out and is moving to Africa to work from Tororo, Uganda! He's building a house on a big ranch (with running water and sewage!) for around $5,000. You can follow his adventures online at Carl's Big Adventure.

After a few cocktails, we sat down to dinner and Brian told us all kinds of crazy stories about traveling in Africa and what he's been through for the past twenty years with the Village Enterprise Fund. He's a pretty incredible guy, and I could've listened to him talk all night.

By the time we left Fiona and I were both feeling fantastic about everything. The energy around that dinner table was so strong it almost made my hair stand on end. It was the same feeling I used to have when I was at Number Six before the dot com crash - like you're standing on the edge of a world with endless possibilities where with the right amount of luck, patience and hard work anything can be accomplished.

These are exciting times, my friends!

Posted by flow Frazao on February 3, 2006 at 03:09 PM in America, Kiva/VEF | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Thursday, 26 January 2006

Kiva in the News

It's been a big couple of weeks for Kiva. Recently, Kiva appeared in the Wall Street Journal and on an interview for the BBC (link via Kiva founder Matt Flannery's blog). This week I've so far seen the following links:

• Kiva: Become a Micro Venture Capitalist (Star Article, UK)
• Be an global financier...on a shoestring (CNN)

The CNN article is really interesting. It's the first mainstream news article I've seen to really delve into the full potential that Kiva offers:

If you've got 25 bucks, a PC and a PayPal account, you've now got the wherewithal to be an international financier.

Thanks to www.Kiva.org, a California-based Web site that connects lenders and borrowers from around the world, anyone can scan business proposals, photos and background information on potential borrowers and decide if the gambit's got legs.

The concept of letting individual, small-time, lenders pick and choose which projects to fund is new in microfinance -- the field of providing very small loans to start-up businesses, usually in the developing world. In the past the industry has been dominated by a handful of large non-profits that operate on grant money or raise cash in capital markets and then distribute as they see fit.

Although Kiva has been operating for just over two months and has served just 50 borrowers so far, all in eastern Africa, co-founder Matthew Flannery said there has been a large amount of interest in the site.

"I sit in front of a tidal wave of money," said Flannery, saying that the number of lenders far exceeds the number of people they can find to borrow the cash. "Businesses are funded in the same day that they're posted."

If the eBay site ever gets off the ground, it would be huge. Hopefully we're looking at the beginning of a whole new system of decentralized international aid and foreign development. Exciting stuff, to say the least.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 26, 2006 at 11:31 AM in Kiva/VEF | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Thursday, 12 January 2006

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 | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Tuesday, 10 January 2006

Kiva Presentation at Hall High School

After substituting at Hall today, I stopped by the social studies department to see one of my old teachers. We got to talking, and when I told her Fiona and I were going to Africa she got really excited and started telling me about this new class she'll be teaching next semester on Human Rights.

Obviously, I think it's fantastic that they're addressing these kinds of topics at the high school level so I offered to help out in any way I could. I told her that if she has any ideas for a project I'd be up for it.

Well, one thing led to another and Fiona and I are going to be doing a talk at the high school on Thursday about microfinancing and our upcoming African adventure. It will be a good opportunity for us to practice talking about Kiva to a large group of people and also to flesh out our understanding of the underlying principles of microcredit and it's applications.

More than anything though, I'm extremely interested to hear what a group of suburban high school kids think of the ideas. Fiona and I spent a few hours this evening putting together our presentation. It should be a good one because not only are we talking about something cool and somewhat revolutionary, but also because we'll be able to intersperse it with crazy stories and pictures from years of traveling through third-world countries.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 10, 2006 at 11:30 PM in Kiva/VEF | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Sunday, 08 January 2006

Kiva Laptop Drive Update

A friend of mine pledged another laptop yesterday, bringing the total up to:

• 5 laptops
• 2 digital cameras

Recently, Kiva has been written about in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ link behind subscription wall, but the link is a reprint via another paper), and The Village Voice.

Do you own a used laptop or digital camera that you can donate to a phenomenal cause? Kiva needs both Internet capable laptop computers as well as digital cameras to support their mission on the delivery side. Please investigate your personal inventory of aging computers and digital cameras. If you have something you can donate leave a comment and we'll take it from there. Kiva will provide you with receipts for the equipment so that you donate. If you do not have anything in your own inventory, please pass word to someone you know who might. We hope to raise between 10 and 20 used laptops and cameras over the next month.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 8, 2006 at 11:29 AM in Kiva/VEF | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Saturday, 07 January 2006

Kiva Laptop Drive Update

People never cease to amaze me with their generosity. When my friend Rob sent out the initial email (see below) with a goal of between 10-20 laptops and cameras I thought he was dreaming. But it looks like it just might happen!

So far we're up to:

• 4 laptops
• 2 digital cameras

Keep em coming!!

Posted by flow Frazao on January 7, 2006 at 12:37 AM in Kiva/VEF | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wednesday, 04 January 2006

Thoughts on What the Future Holds for the Non-Profit World

As most of you know, I've been doing a lot of reading over the past few months about microfinancing and the world of non-profits in general. I've learned quite a lot, and it's been a humbling experience to jump into a universe about which I know so little.

One of the themes I've come across repeatedly in my readings is what seems to be a relatively high level of mistrust regarding charitable donations. A week ago I read an article on the anniversary of the tsunami that said over a third of the donations had gone to operating costs for the various organizations. Similarly, I've heard about the same type of behavior (and worse) regarding money donated after 9/11. One can only imagine what we'll be hearing on the one year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

Of course, this type of conduct is confined to a small minority of organizations, but it happens enough that it seems to have become a considerable deterrent to people donating money. How many times have you heard somebody say "Yeah, I'd like to donate some money, but who knows how much of that will actually make it to the people in need?"

One of the things I find so exciting about Kiva is the prospect of countering this type of attitude by addressing the problem directly. For the first time, a global technology exists that can reassure people that yes, all of your money is really going directly to a person who needs it. Thanks to regular photos/blogging/email updates, there will be no doubt as to the difference a Kiva donation will have made. I suspect that this will be a very effective way to show people that 30% overhead is not a byproduct of philanthropy, but merely ineffective operating on the part of an outdated model.

My vision is that in the 21st century the days of handing money to a monolithic organization only to watch it disappear behind a curtain will be over. Why shouldn't people keep tabs on their social investments as well as their stocks, bonds, and other assets? There's no reason that people shouldn't expect a return on any investment - be it a financially beneficial or social one. The return might not take on a monetary form, but it is still a return just the same.

In addition to making profit-maximizing investments in companies based on potential financial gain, the 21st century "social capitalist" will also choose to make social-objective driven investments (aka donations) based on potential social gain. For example, while a traditional investment takes into account things like P/E ratios and Morningstar ratings, a socially motivated investment will consider factors such as administrative costs vs. actual services delivered and ratings by independent non-profit evaluators such as Charity Navigator.

Fifteen years ago it would have been impossible to imagine the amount of control individuals now wield over their portfolios. In 1990 who would have thought that Grandmas would be daytrading in their muumuus over a computer without ever having to call a stockbroker or sign a pile of forms?

The same level of control is coming to the non-profit world. People will soon be able to monitor their social investments with as little effort as they now monitor their other assets. The days of enormous organizations siphoning money off the goodwill of regular people are numbered, and I certainly won't miss them when they're gone.

For a more in-depth look at the future of the non-profit world by one of the industry leaders, take a look at this paper by Muhammad Yunus.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 4, 2006 at 01:18 AM in Kiva/VEF, Microfinancing, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Kiva Laptop Drive

Do you own a used laptop or digital camera that you can donate to a phenomenal cause?

Kiva needs both Internet capable laptop computers as well as digital cameras to support their mission on the delivery side.

Please investigate your personal inventory of aging computers and digital cameras. If you have something you can donate leave a comment and we'll take it from there. Kiva will provide you with receipts for the equipment so that you donate. If you do not have anything in your own inventory, please pass word to someone you know who might.

We hope to raise between 10 and 20 used laptops and cameras over the next month.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 4, 2006 at 12:44 AM in Kiva/VEF | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Sunday, 18 December 2005

Banker to the Poor

As you may or may not know, Fiona and I are planning on going to Africa in mid-February. I wrote a long post about it here, in case you want to play catch-up.

We'll be working on a microcredit project in conjunction with the Village Enterprise Fund, and in preparation I've been doing a fair amount of research into the field of microfinancing.

Right now, I'm reading a book called Banker to the Poor by Muhammad Yunus. The author is the founder of one of the first microlending projects, and the book is a chronicle of his experiences along the way.

Since it is so difficult (for me, at least) to explain the concept of microcredit, I'll let Mr. Yunus do the talking for me:

In the mid-1970s Mr. Yunus extended a $27 loan to a group of 40 people. From that one act, a series of events transpired which lead to his founding the Grameen Bank, and today Mr. Yunus' little project has become the largest bank in Bangladesh and has provided over 3.8 billion dollars to 2.4 million families. The loan repayment rate hovers at around 98% (American small business loans default somewhere around 30% of the time). It also bears mentioning that the 98% figure includes the effects of the devastating Bangladeshi floods of 1981, 1985, 1987, and 1988. In short, to say the Grameen experiment has been a success would be a rather absurd understatement.

It's fascinating to read about the obstacles that Grameen has overcome during the course of its evolution. Time and time again, Mr. Yunus has found himself up against seemingly immovable barriers, and he's managed to resolve the problems every time with logic, compassion, and a laser-focused vision that he refuses to compromise.

To read more about Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank, click here.

Posted by flow Frazao on December 18, 2005 at 02:05 AM in Kiva/VEF, Microfinancing | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Friday, 11 November 2005

Microfinancing From The Entrepreneur's Perspective

As a follow-up to yesterday's post, here's a letter by a business owner who was the recipient of a $300 loan from Kiva (which has been repaid in full):

It's hard to imagine that $300 dollars can make such an immeasurable difference, isn't it? And there's loads more where this letter came from.

Posted by flow Frazao on November 11, 2005 at 07:12 PM in Kiva/VEF, Microfinancing | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Thursday, 10 November 2005

The Start of Something Big

It's been a very exciting couple of days. I'm not really sure where to start, so I'll go from the beginning.

As I'm sure anyone affluent enough to be reading this blog knows, we are living in a capitalistic society. "It takes money to make money," or so goes the saying. For example, in order to open a new business in America a budding entrepreneur would need to take out a small business loan at a bank in order to get started (unless he or she is incredibly lucky). Generally, these loans are in the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, so banks don't hand them out to just anybody.

In order to get his loan the entrepreneur would generally show up at a bank in a suit and tie and hope that his credit and ideas are both good enough to convince the loan manager to lend him the necessary startup capital. If he has a decent credit history and a viable business plan, then odds are he'd walk away with a loan for enough money to get him on his way. Once he starts making a profit, then he can pay back his loan and begin growing his business and creating wealth.

However, if he has a bad credit history (or worse, none at all) then it's unlikely any bank would take a risk on him. And without that initial seed money, our would-be entrepreneur is out of luck. For better or worse, one of the main determiners of success in this world is one's access to capital on credit.

In the developing world, the model is exactly the same. The only difference is a matter of scale. Instead of small business loans being in the $100,000 range, they can be as low as $100. In third world economies a hundred dollars is enough to buy a few fishing nets or a sewing machine, and that is enough to start a viable business.

The problem arises when a poor entrepreneur walks into a bank. With no credit record and no collateral, banks are simply not set up to deal with issuing loans to the impoverished. Poor people can't get loans, which means they can't start businesses, which means they're stuck in an endless loop of poverty.

This is where the concept of Microfinancing comes in. Over the past 20 years, a model of international aid has arisen to plug the holes in the banks that poor people fall through:

After having been through countries like Cambodia, I've seen the damage that can be done by too much welfare. For example, the Cambodian government has jailed Cambodians for defusing landmines because the government is afraid that if all the landmines are defused then they'll stop getting foreign aid.

That said, the idea of Microfinancing is a "teach a man to fish" solution, and over the past thirty years it's proven to be very successful:

Fiona and I had heard about this notion, and we started thinking about what we could do to help implement it. We came up with an idea for a website where we could directly link donors with entrepreneurs. We figured we could post a bit about the person who needed a small start-up loan, and then people could sign up to sponsor them with loans as small as, say, $25. Then over the course of the loan, the donor would be kept updated as to how the entrepreneur was doing. There would be a real connection there and it would be plainly evident how much difference even a small amount of money could make to somebody.

We spent about three days in a frenzy of planning and creative talks. The energy between us has been so high it's staggering.

Then we found out that a couple of people had exactly the same idea as us about a year ago, and their website came out of testing in mid-October. Kiva.org is the first organization to use the internet to bring the power of Microfinancing directly to the donor. Of course, there was a part of me that was disappointed that we didn't get there first, but I suppose I can get over that.

We immediately got in touch with the founders of Kiva, and found out that they're a young married couple (like us) in San Francisco. I offered to help in any way I can (I've been known to write a line of code or two), and I'm eagerly waiting to find out what I can do to help.

After making contact with Kiva, Fiona called Kiva's partner, Village Enterprise Fund to find out more about opportunities with them. Wouldn't you know it, the founder of VEF picked up the phone.

He was on his way out the door to catch a flight to Tanzania, but he was excited to hear about us. He gave us his email address, and after sending our resumes and such, we wound up talking to him this morning over the phone (we actually used Skype, but you get my point).

We spoke to him for about twenty minutes, and came away extremely excited. He said he's already thinking about a couple of different things we could do, and we're going to get in touch again when he gets back to the US on Nov. 20. We're tentatively planning to go to San Francisco in early February to meet with him, but we'll need to find out more over the next few months.

I'm really looking forward to the prospect of being able to employ all the knowledge I've acquired travelling and working over the past 10 years. Looking back I feel like the collective bunch of all my random experiences - from writing web-based software to teaching English classes in Thailand to getting fondled by a Buddhist monk in Southeast Asia - have all led up to this. I feel, for the first time in my life, that I am in a unique position to use a skill set that I alone possess in a way that could positively affect people all over the world.

For more information check out the following links:

• United Nations - The International Year of Microcredit 2005
• Kiva
• Village Enterprise Fund
• Wikipedia page on Microcredit

Posted by flow Frazao on November 10, 2005 at 11:11 PM in Kiva/VEF, Microfinancing | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack