Kiva fellows connect online lenders with borrowers

Ester is the poster child for how microfinance can grow small businesses. A mother of three and owner of a small farm in central Kenya, she raises dairy cows, grows vegetables and makes cement water pipes with a handful of employees. Many of her businesses were funded by loans from people she has never met, through a Web site called Kiva.org. Kiva is a nonprofit based in San Francisco that allows individual lenders from all over the world to make zero-percent interest loans of as little as $25 to micro-entrepreneurs in the developing world. In return, lenders are repaid on a monthly basis, and receive at least one journal update on how their contribution has impacted the loan recipient. To date, the Kiva community has raised more than $75 million in funds from 500,000 unique lenders with only about a 2 percent default rate. Kiva makes these transactions possible by partnering with microfinance institutions, or “field partners,” on the ground in some 44 countries. For Kiva’s field partners, posting loan requests online and writing updates for lenders can be tedious work. That’s where the Kiva fellowship program comes in. “Kiva is about connecting people, primarily the lenders on our Web site to the entrepreneurs in the field. The Fellows Program actually allows us to train our partners, and to really get premium content to our lenders,” said J.D. Bergeron, Kiva’s fellowship manager. This self-funded volunteer position provides the opportunity for hands-on exposure to microfinance clients and institutions. On a daily basis, fellows interview borrowers, write journal entries, train partner staff, and build goodwill among the Kiva community. In rare cases, fellows have worked on rather tricky assignments. For example, this article’s author, a former Kiva fellow, was involved in an unsuccessful effort to salvage a field partner organization that could not repay lenders. Another fellow discovered fraud at a field partners and helped to report the facts to Kiva lenders. Assignments last between 10 weeks and one year. Volunteers of more than six months should expect to be reassigned to a different partner, country or continent at least once during their fellowship. Fellows typically finance their assignments through savings, fundraising from family and friends, and grants from schools or employers. On average, volunteers should budget approximately $5,000 for a three-month fellowship, although a good portion of this expense goes toward air travel. Without travel costs, a fellow’s expenses usually range from $500 to $1,000 per month of their assignment. Applying to the program begins with filling out an online application and writing a sample journal entry. Applicants must also submit a mock budget and demonstrate their basic technology savvy using Skype and creating a blog site. The sample journal entry requires an applicant to interview a local entrepreneur; it should be written like a typical Kiva loan request. “If people are uncomfortable doing that [interviewing and journal-writing] even in their own hometowns, they probably won’t be comfortable with it in a foreign culture or in a different a language,” Bergeron said. “Things don’t have to be long to be good; we look for brevity. Creativity is nice but we want to create a system that is replicable by our partners because they may have less time than the fellow to write one.” Generally, applicants fall into three profiles: undergraduates with some travel experience and foreign language skills, aspiring graduate students, or career-switchers with consulting or financial services backgrounds. In the past years, as Kiva’s brand grew, so has the competition to enter its fellowship program. Only one of seven applicants was picked in the second quarter of 2008. The program accepts candidates on a rolling basis and takes in about four classes per year of about 35 fellows each. The next deadline to apply is Oct. 1 for a February or April 2010 departure. Candidates that stand out usually speak a “Kiva language” such as French, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Khmer or Vietnamese, and have a good deal of self-awareness and demonstrated adaptability when traveling abroad. Kiva still offers a lot of English assignments in countries like Kenya and the Philippines - in fact, English proficiency is required for all fellows, regardless of citizenship. Increasingly in-demand are candidate with a consulting background, technical skills in videography, or an understanding of application programming interfaces, since these skills are needed at many Kiva partners. Applicants may go through two rounds of interviews. The first is by phone with a Kiva staffer or former fellow and may require a language test. Interviewees are screened for their motivations, commitment and previous travel experiences. Candidate who passe this round will have another phone interview with Bergeron, who gauges an applicant’s level of self-awareness and adaptability. “The Fellows Program is designed to be very very independent. Sometimes for people who truly truly want to do this work, it turns out not to be a great fit because they maybe want to achieve too much and they must be patient with what’s possible,” Bergeron said. “I am looking for people who want to challenge themselves and want to make a difference, who are perhaps not too idealistic, because really you’re going there to learn. You are not going to become an expert in microfinance. You are going to have a life-changing experience.” Incoming fellows must attend a week-long orientation and training at Kiva’s San Francisco headquarters before they depart for the field. Candidates get placed only at the request of a partner, so the matching process can take some time. Patience and flexibility during this phase are important. Some placements aren’t in glamorous locations but do offer a substantial learning experience, Bergeron noted. More challenging fellowship postings can be found in Nigeria, northern Mexico, Pakistan, southern Sudan and Tajikistan. Once in the field, fellows will report on a weekly basis to one of Kiva’s regional partnership managers, all of which are based in San Fransisco. The fellowship team will also be in regular contact by e-mail or phone. But for the most part, Kiva fellows tend to interact only with their field partner host on a day-to-day basis. Upon their return, some fellows find the experience a first step towards a career in microfinance or international development - and a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Rarely do fellows return to their previous jobs, Bergeron said. Read more microfinance career advice: - How to Become a ‘Banker to the Poor’ - A Business School Focuses on the Poor - Microfinance Jobs for Beginners - Tourism Industry Veteran Leaps to International Microfinance - Microfinance Careers at FINCA International Read more career advice articles.