Erick Ommeh

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to Erick Ommeh by SEED Development Group in Kenya. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the next 8 - 10 months, SEED Development Group will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

With the loan I obtained I was able to expand my business and now I am getting more clients. Thank you.

My business is growing more and more each day. There are no more words to say other than life is improving. Thank you again.

Erick’s business is located just outside of a bustling open-air market within the city of Kisumu. Currently unable to relocate to a more marketable area due to higher costs within the city, Erick decided to hire an employee to market his custom made products in addition to picking up and dropping off orders. Erick was also able to buy new soles for shoe repair, and new raw materials to manufacture more of his own custom shoes.

While he still hopes to own shoe-making machinery, he was unable to qualify for a loan that was large enough to support the price of the machine and the added operational expense of electricity. Erick has not lost sight of what the machine can do to expand his business, but until he increases awareness of his products and services, there is still not enough demand for the potential daily output that a machine will produce. Although business has been difficult, the materials purchased to repair and design new shoes have attracted a few new customers and he's hoping the mobile employee will be successful in marketing to other areas of the city.

Despite his professional struggles, the loan has helped Erick to support his large family, and he has successfully paid school fees for both of his children and his younger siblings. Overall the loan has helped him to slowly create a stronger foundation for his business, and he plans on pursuing a second loan after repaying this loan to relocate to Kisumu's city centre.

The business(es) listed above was posted on Kiva's website by our Kenyan Field Partner, SEED Development Group. Our Field Partners are independent microfinance institutions that lend to the poor for poverty alleviation. The role of a Field Partner is to screen each entrepreneur, post his/her profile on the Kiva website, disburse the loan, and collect loan repayments.

During an audit of SEED, Kiva discovered that SEED was not providing entrepreneurs with the full amount of their loans raised on Kiva. This violates Kiva's policies, so we have terminated our partnership with SEED.

Following this discovery, there was a thorough investigation of the situation. Ultimately, SEED defaulted on its entire loan portfolio with Kiva, which means that no further funds are collectible. To learn more about this particular situation and what Kiva is doing to prevent this in the future, please visit:

http://www.kiva.org/about/aboutPartner?id=32

Any repayment notifications you may have received up until this point are available to you as Kiva Credit. Please visit Kiva to re-lend, withdraw or donate this credit to Kiva.

Please realize that our audit uncovered a true exception to the norm; the vast majority of our Field Partners administer your loans with the highest integrity. Kiva will continue to audit Field Partners to monitor the integrity of your loan and to make our website a model for transparency in international development.

Thank you for your understanding and support of Kiva.