Maya is an officially registered Economic Enterprise founded and still under the umbrella of the Foundation for the Support of Women’s Work (FSWW), a Turkish NGO whose mission is to improve womens’ economic well-being and quality of life. From its belief in the power of grassroots solutions, and respect for womens’ own abilities to improve their situations in life, the FSWW founded began working in Microcredit in 1995. These efforts were interrupted by the Marmara earthquake in 1999, and Maya was finally established in 2002, in part to help women improve their circumstances in the wake of the disaster. 

Maya aims to communicate with every client one-on-one through the loan application, evaluation, approval and monitoring processes in order to provide loans quickly, easily and with minimal transactional costs. Maya loan officers come from the communities it serves, and aim to go beyond providing credit to help clients access support to confront personal issues, access buyers for their products, and more. 

Loan products

1.       Solidarity group loans:
-      Do not require collateral
-      Offered to groups of 3-10 women who know and trust each other.

2.       Individual loans
-      Require collateral
-      Offered to women who need larger loans, or who cannot form groups

3.       Emergency loans
-      Provided to existing clients who urgently need funds for such needs as health care, school fees, or maintenance for their home.

Maya currently serves its clients through a network of branch offices in Kocaeli, Eskisehir, Duzce, Sakarya, and Istanbul and is headquartered in Istanbul.

Kiva's new risk rating system, which now includes half stars, has enabled us to display Maya's risk rating with a higher level of granularity. As a result, Maya's risk rating will now be displayed as 1.5 stars instead of 2 stars. 

We have prepared a blog post with more information on Kiva's new and enhanced risk rating system, along with a chart showing the relative magnitude of the overall changes for Kiva's portfolio.  To view that, please go here: http://www.kiva.org/updates/kiva/2011/09/07/kiva-risk-ratings-now-with-half-stars.html.

Maya has been informed of the change in the display of their rating on Kiva's website.