Funded

Total loan: $550

Tendwa's Group

Kakamega North, Kenya / Farming

A loan helped a member to purchase hybrid seeds and fertilizer for the cultivation of maize. Some members of the group will also buy a solar light.

Tendwa's Group's story

Pictured above is Tendwa, who, as a group leader, is representing his group formed by eight farmers in Kakamega North District, Kenya. Tendwa is married and is a father to six children. He is known by his community as a very resourceful person.

Initially, Tendwa joined One Acre Fund in 2010. He wanted to have access to quality training and acquire new farming methods. Since he joined the program, he says that his life has improved, especially because he has learned a lot from farming trainings. With the profits from the coming harvesting season, Tendwa plans to send his children to school.

Among the eight farmers in Tendwa's Group, a total of three acres of land will be planted using the maize seeds and fertilizer they received with this loan. Additionally, some of the farmers in the group will be purchasing a solar light. With this loan, the group will receive a total of four solar lights, in addition to the farm inputs already mentioned.

In this group: Tendwa, Maritha, Johana, Charles S., Chekwenda, Edward M., Shadrack, Pamela

More about this loan

This loan is part of One Acre Fund's integrated agricultural package, which provides groups of smallholder farmers with seeds and fertilizers on credit, onsite agricultural training, and insurance options. Borrowers also have the option to purchase solar lanterns as part of the loan package.

To give borrowers more flexibility, One Acre Fund permits them to switch groups, drop out of the program and change their loan amounts before receiving their inputs. To accommodate this, Kiva allows One Acre Fund to post loans for groups that may change in size and membership. Only the group leader is featured in the photo, representing the loans for each of his or her individual group members.

If a lender makes a loan to group containing a borrower that drops out, the lender will receive the full loan amount for that borrower back at the end of the harvest season. If the lender makes a loan to a group containing a borrower that decides to take a smaller loan amount after the loan is funded, the lender will receive the repayments from the smaller loan amount plus the full difference between the two loan amounts at the end of the harvest season.

This Kiva loan will be used to provide borrowers with needed goods or services, as opposed to cash or financial credit.

About One Acre Fund:

One Acre Fund is an agricultural service provider that supports Africa's smallholder farmers to build resilient communities. More than 50 million families in Sub-Saharan Africa earn a living from small farms, which produce 80 percent of the continent’s food. But harvests still lag far behind the rest of the world. One Acre Fund supplies the financing and training these farmers need to grow their way out of hunger and build lasting pathways to prosperity.