Unice Nyambura Wambugu

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to Unice Nyambura Wambugu by Kenya Agency for Development of Enterprise and Technology (KADET), a partner of World Vision International in Kenya. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the 6 months of this loan, Kenya Agency for Development of Enterprise and Technology (KADET), a partner of World Vision International will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

Dear Kiva Lender,

As you may be aware, your loan to a borrower working with the Kenya Agency for Development of Enterprise and Technology (KADET) recently posted a large repayment. Please find a note from Alice Syuki, Kiva Coordinator at KADET, regarding this below.

Sincerely,

Kiva Team

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Hello all,

My name is Alice and I am the Kiva Coordinator for KADET. Thank you so much for your interest in our organization and for taking the time to get to know our borrowers. We are very appreciative of your support as lenders.

Today, I wanted to write and explain the mishap that occurred during last month’s repayment reporting. While pulling the repayment reports from our internal reporting system, I used the wrong column of the report to upload to Kiva’s system, and therefore submitted inaccurate, much to high, numbers. We later identify this problem, but it was too late to fix it. We have since put in place a new process to ensure that this does not happen again.

We appreciate your support and understanding and will continue to work hard to ensure that we provide you with accurate client data. The connection between you, the lenders, and our borrowers is incredibly important to us. I hope you feel confident in KADET’s system and continue to lend to KADET borrowers.

Thanks for all your help,

Alice

Dear Lender,

My name is John Briggs and I finished my 10-week placement as a Kiva Fellow at the Kenya Agency for the Development of Enterprise and Technology (KADET) in mid-August 2009. You are receiving this update because you funded a KADET borrower through Kiva.

KADET's Fast Track to Success on Kiva

KADET is a microfinance institution (MFI) founded by World Vision Kenya in the year 2000, and has a lending footprint that spans the country. Its borrowers include farmers who till the fertile soil near Lake Victoria to the west, artisans who live along the Swahili-steeped Indian Ocean coast to the east, livestock herders of the Great Rift Valley and the arid northern regions, and tradespeople that ply the streets of Kenya's bustling capital, Nairobi.

KADET started listing its borrowers on the Kiva website in late May as a "pilot phase" field partner. Pilot phase partners are essentially on probation, and before they can exit the pilot phase they must demonstrate they can fundraise successfully using Kiva, and meet a number of financial and operations reporting requirements. As KADET's first Kiva Fellow, my goal was to graduate the MFI from the pilot phase by helping it to implement a set of scalable and sustainable Kiva-related operations.

Working with my Kenyan counterparts, I went from branch to branch and trained dozens of KADET field personnel on the nuts and bolts of how Kiva works, and explained Kiva policy and procedure. My favorite part of training was the "aha!" look on KADET employees' faces when they saw that Kiva wasn't just another funder, but that there were individual lenders and lending teams from around the world that had chosen to fund their borrowers in Kenya. It made Kiva's mission of "connecting people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty" ring true.

For many new field partner MFIs, doing what Kiva asks is no simple thing, but KADET made short work of the challenge – it met all of its pilot phase requirements and was able to move to "active" Kiva status by mid-September! Active status allows KADET to post more of its borrowers on the Kiva website, and provides the foundation for a long-term partnership with Kiva. KADET is one of 12 Kenyan MFIs that have ever partnered with Kiva, and currently is one of only three Kenyan MFIs that are actively fundraising on Kiva.

My KADET and Kenya Top Five

My time with KADET in Kenya taught me much about the country, its people, and how microfinance operates there. I'd like to share my KADET and Kenya "top five" with you, ranked in no particular order. As you read the top five, please look at the photo-collage below. You can also view this photo-collage on the Kiva page for the KADET borrower you lent to or at http://bit.ly/1cKMSf.

1. KADET's leadership and its organization.

Pictured in photo-collage, L-R: David Ruchiu, KADET CEO; KADET Mombasa branch staff

David Ruchiu, KADET's CEO, is a gracious, warm, and thoughtful leader who doesn't mince words. He told a local newspaper once that if he could, he'd move Kenyan members of parliament "to Mongolia or some remote part of the world so that Kenya can have a new beginning." Though Ruchiu can't exile Kenya's often ineffective and corrupt leadership, he has found that microfinance can bring new beginnings and opportunity to his fellow citizens.

Ruchiu, who has focused KADET's organization on customer satisfaction, stresses the importance of rural development and is quick to point out that unfettered microlending is not an antidote to poverty. The prospect of overindebtedness among clients worries him, so KADET carefully examines its borrowers' needs, repayment capacity, and the income generating effect of potential loans.

"Ruchiu: I Would Take Our MPs to Mongolia" – copy of an article from the Nairobi Star (PDF): http://bit.ly/3ajZM3

2. KADET's borrower groups.

Pictured in photo-collage, L-R: KADET roster of borrower groups in Kangemi; a borrower group meeting in Mikindani; a borrower group meeting in Shanzu

In a borrower group, members receive individual loans but are bound by a “group guarantee” – each member of the group supports the others, and is responsible for covering the potential delinquency or default of fellow group members. As a Kiva Fellow, I sat in on more than a few KADET borrower group meetings and found the mix of genders, religions, ages, and entrepreneurial experience of borrowers to be exhilarating. They're not just lending groups, but also neighborhood forums and business workshops that are incubators for ideas and action. Borrower group names I saw on a roster at a KADET branch tell the story: Joy Bringers, Patience, Impact, Shakers & Movers, Young Investors, and Soul Food.

"Bound Together, Not Tied Down" – blog post about a borrower group meeting at K-MET, another Kenyan MFI and Kiva partner, by former Kiva Fellow Joel Carlman: http://bit.ly/urPO6

Part 2 Update from John Briggs:

3. Working with KADET staff in the field.

Pictured in photo-collage, L-R: Photographing Kiva-funded borrower Nancy Nzisa in Shanzu; KADET manager Francis Njoroge smiling as cows stop traffic in Nairobi during field work; photographing Kiva-funded borrower Julius Mbola Odhiambo in Naivasha

Accompanying KADET staff to meet borrowers was truly a privilege, often unpredictable, and always a learning experience. We'd visit borrowers at their place of business and, despite interrupting people's busy workdays for photographs and interviews, were invariably given a very warm welcome. The Kiva-funded entrepreneurs I met in Kenya were excited to share details of their businesses and how microloans from KADET had affected them.

Taking photos was often the high point of visits, both for KADET credit officers and the borrowers; using the links below, compare the photos in the collage of KADET staff taking borrowers’ pictures with the photos that made it to the actual borrower pages on the Kiva website:

Nancy Nzisa's borrower page on Kiva: http://bit.ly/1m2OD5

Julius Mbola Odhiambo's borrower page on Kiva: http://bit.ly/qpDzb

4. Using "Fistful of Dollars" as a training tool.

Pictured in photo-collage, top to bottom: Watching "Fistful of Dollars" at the KADET Eldoret branch; a viewing at the Narok branch

You're making your first visit to a branch office of a Kiva partner MFI and have just met umpteen new colleagues. Your mission is to get them to understand what Kiva is and how it works. There's no Internet connection, it's just after lunch, and people are crowded into a hot office. Everyone wants to be attentive, but heads are nodding and eyes are drooping. That PowerPoint presentation about Kiva you brought is probably the most potent sedative ever – how can you win your audience's attention? Show them "Fistful of Dollars"!

"Fistful" is former Kiva Fellow Kieran Ball's short-form cinematic tour de force that follows the path of a $25 Kiva loan made in London to a village in Cambodia. The 11-minute video never failed to hold a KADET audience rapt. It provoked conversations about the Kiva person-to-person lending model, about how MFIs operate around the world, and allowed people still unfamiliar with the Internet to understand how Kiva works. I used it to open all my training sessions at KADET branches in Kenya.

"A Fistful Of Dollars: The Story Of A Kiva.org Loan" – blog post that features the video, by Kieran Ball: http://bit.ly/12ayqD

5. KADET's embrace of new technology to better serve borrowers.

Pictured in photo-collage, L-R: Repayment collection at a KADET borrower group meeting; Safaricom's M-pesa logo; Kiva-funded borrower Lina Limo, who repays her loan using M-pesa

KADET recently made it possible for its borrowers to make repayments by using the ubiquitous mobile phone. This saves borrowers time and money, especially for those who live in rural areas – most no longer need to travel as far to pay their loan installments. KADET's adoption of M-pesa, Kenya's most popular mobile remittance service, would be an impressive technological accomplishment for any MFI, and dovetails neatly with KADET's focus on customer satisfaction and rural development.

"Microfinance firm’s clients to repay loans via M-pesa" – article about KADET and M-pesa from the Business Daily: http://bit.ly/45Wmir

"M-Banking!" – blog posting about mobile remittance services in Kenya by former Kiva Fellow Brett Dobbs: http://bit.ly/NvE7g

Lina Limo's borrower page on Kiva – a KADET borrower I met who repays using a mobile phone: http://bit.ly/42fEpx

Thank you for taking the time to read about KADET and its partnership with Kiva. Please join me in congratulating KADET on its recent move from pilot to regular status, and in wishing KADET and its borrowers continued success!

Sincerely,

John Briggs

Kiva Fellow, KADET

June – August 2009