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 Post subject: Re: Kiva Lending Team
PostPosted: Fri Jun 12, 2015 4:53 pm 
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Well done, team.

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 Post subject: Re: Kiva Lending Team
PostPosted: Tue Aug 18, 2015 9:16 am 
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http://www.kiva.org/lend/918543

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 Post subject: Re: Kiva Lending Team
PostPosted: Tue Sep 22, 2015 9:19 am 
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http://www.kiva.org/lend/945717

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 Post subject: Re: Kiva Lending Team
PostPosted: Wed Nov 04, 2015 3:46 pm 
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An article on a microfinance organization turned public corporation that is being found responsible for suicides in India. Some scary, scary shit in here. Long, but worth the read.

Quote:
Both reports said SKS employees had verbally harassed over-indebted borrowers, forced them to pawn valuable items, incited other borrowers to humiliate them and orchestrated sit-ins outside their homes to publicly shame them. In some cases, the SKS staff physically harassed defaulters, according to the report commissioned by the company. Only in death would the debts be forgiven.

The videos and reports tell stark stories:

One woman drank pesticide and died a day after an SKS loan agent told her to prostitute her daughters to pay off her debt. She had been given 150,000 rupees ($3,000) in loans but only made 600 rupees ($12) a week.

Another SKS debt collector told a delinquent borrower to drown herself in a pond if she wanted her loan waived. The next day, she did. She left behind four children.

One agent blocked a woman from bringing her young son, weak with diarrhea, to the hospital, demanding payment first. Other borrowers, who could not get any new loans until she paid, told her that if she wanted to die, they would bring her pesticide. An SKS staff member was there when she drank the poison. She survived.

An 18-year-old girl, pressured until she handed over 150 rupees ($3) — meant for a school examination fee — also drank pesticide. She left a suicide note: "Work hard and earn money. Do not take loans."

In all these cases, the report commissioned by SKS concluded that the company's staff was either directly or indirectly responsible.


http://www.businessinsider.com/hundreds ... ons-2012-2

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The deaths came after a period of hypergrowth leading up to the company's hugely successful August 2010 initial public offering.

Originally developed as a nonprofit effort to lift society's most downtrodden, microfinance has increasingly become a for-profit enterprise that serves investors as well as the poor. As India's market leader, SKS has pioneered a business model that many others hoped to emulate.

...

A profound shift in values and incentives at SKS began in 2008.

In October, Boston-based Sandstone Capital, now SKS' largest investor, made a major investment. It joined U.S. private equity firm Sequoia Capital, which funded Google and Apple and is SKS' largest shareholder, on the board of directors.

Akula, who had been chief executive in the company's early days, stepped down in December 2008 but stayed on as chairman. The company brought in new top executives from the worlds of finance and insurance.

SKS also began transferring more loans off its books, selling highly rated pools of loans to banks, which then assumed most of the associated risk of borrower default. That freed SKS to push out more and bigger loans.

In December 2009, SKS launched a massive sales drive. The "Incentives Galore" program ran through February 2010 — just one month before the company filed its IPO prospectus.

Agents won prizes worth up to 10 times their average monthly salary for signing huge numbers of new borrowers. Vautrey said he coordinated the shipment of 8,800 televisions, refrigerators, gold coins, mixers, washing machines and DVDs as rewards for more than 3,000 districts nationwide.

One loan officer signed up 273 groups in a month. Under training protocols, the ideal number of groups formed per month is 12, the maximum is 36, according to field agents and reports written by Akula.

"The focus is only on targets," Ramulu Sirgapur, who spent a decade at SKS before he left in December, told AP. "Even if we've given feedback, there might be recovery or repayment issues. That's OK. Just concentrate on growth."

The result: Management had a great set of numbers to show investors as it shopped the IPO. In a month, SKS could add 400,000 borrowers and 100 branches, and train more than 1,000 new loan officers. SKS had 6.8 million borrowers and had disbursed $3.2 billion in loans. India was pimpled with SKS branches, which bloomed in nearly 100,000 villages.

SKS said it was the fastest growing microfinance company in the world.

But basic principles of lending were overlooked, according to interviews with current and former employees, as well as correspondence and internal PowerPoint presentations by Akula.

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 Post subject: Re: Kiva Lending Team
PostPosted: Thu Feb 18, 2016 10:50 am 
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Had to. First one that popped up when I went looking for a new loan in countries I hadn't lent to yet.

https://www.kiva.org/lend/1013531

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 Post subject: Re: Kiva Lending Team
PostPosted: Thu Feb 18, 2016 2:46 pm 
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Bosc wrote:
Had to. First one that popped up when I went looking for a new loan in countries I hadn't lent to yet.

https://www.kiva.org/lend/1013531


I saw that one yesterday. I am partial to South America. I have to invest my money into my potential future home.

I don't like how Kiva automatically adds a donation to the cart.

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 Post subject: Re: Kiva Lending Team
PostPosted: Thu Feb 18, 2016 8:25 pm 
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For my Kiva loans, I am partial to Africa and to women run ventures. I will certainly avoid SKS loans if I run across them. It is my firm belief that this type of behavior on the part of SKS loan officers and collection agents is the direct result of a lack of strong financial company regulation. This happens to be in India but it is practiced worldwide too. This behavior is prevalent in the United States as well. The Financial Crisis of 2008 had no real effect on curbing predatory lending along with illegal debt collection practices still a major problem. It will only get worse because of the increasing income inequality and the need for working people having to use credit to live in this society at this time. Pay Day Loan company's did not exist until very recently.

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 Post subject: Re: Kiva Lending Team
PostPosted: Fri Feb 19, 2016 10:42 am 
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I don't think SKS is a Kiva partner. I think I looked when I posted the article and they weren't on the list.

I'm trying to spread things around a bit but it's almost all to women. Most to one country is Pakistan, where Anam and her family are originally from.

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 Post subject: Re: Kiva Lending Team
PostPosted: Mon Aug 22, 2016 2:59 pm 
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ALERT!!! Kiva group needs funded help purchasing Beer! Immediate assistance from OTP members required! Save the Beer!

I would need beer too if I had to carry that kid around!

https://www.kiva.org/lend/1132121



I thought this was pretty cool:

Clearly we like women and food. My preference of lending to Peru is also of note.

https://www.kiva.org/team/offthepost/impact

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 Post subject: Re: Kiva Lending Team
PostPosted: Wed Nov 01, 2017 9:50 am 
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My Kiva loan to a business in Georgia took forever to pay back, but I'm finally able to loan my $25 again. It's going to a shea butter biz in Ghana.

My 10th loan on the same $25 bucks. I think it started as $50 but Kiva fees cut it in half.

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 Post subject: Re: Kiva Lending Team
PostPosted: Wed Nov 01, 2017 11:14 am 
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E.L. wrote:
My Kiva loan to a business in Georgia took forever to pay back, but I'm finally able to loan my $25 again. It's going to a shea butter biz in Ghana.

My 10th loan on the same $25 bucks. I think it started as $50 but Kiva fees cut it in half.


You can change the fee donation to 0.

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 Post subject: Re: Kiva Lending Team
PostPosted: Mon Nov 06, 2017 10:02 am 
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Bosc wrote:
E.L. wrote:
My Kiva loan to a business in Georgia took forever to pay back, but I'm finally able to loan my $25 again. It's going to a shea butter biz in Ghana.

My 10th loan on the same $25 bucks. I think it started as $50 but Kiva fees cut it in half.


You can change the fee donation to 0.


Yes they automatically sneak that in when you go to fund the loan. Shady as hell....but so is microlending.

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 Post subject: Re: Kiva Lending Team
PostPosted: Fri Jan 19, 2018 10:26 am 
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We're at 299 loans it looks like. Who wants to be #300?

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 Post subject: Re: Kiva Lending Team
PostPosted: Mon Jul 23, 2018 10:59 am 
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Crossed $8000! Good job folks!

https://www.kiva.org/team/offthepost/impact

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 Post subject: Re: Kiva Lending Team
PostPosted: Mon Jul 23, 2018 11:20 am 
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Don't know how I missed this thread. Is it too late to get involved?


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 Post subject: Re: Kiva Lending Team
PostPosted: Mon Jul 23, 2018 11:36 am 
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No...not at all. I joined Kiva over a decade ago now...so I am not sure how the whole join process works with them. I would imagine just signing up making a deposit and then joining the OTP team. Its public and we have a few folks in there that I don't know.

I believe I started with $100.

At least we can say we have done something productive through the site.

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 Post subject: Re: Kiva Lending Team
PostPosted: Mon Jul 23, 2018 6:29 pm 
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I made my 37th loan today to, what else, a pub in Tanzania. She is still fundraising and you can check her out at https://www.kiva.org/lend/1559868. My total input is $102 which I've turned into $925 in loans over the years. Every time I reach $25 in my account portfolio, I lend it back out. I never pay that $3.50 donation to Kiva's upkeep. It takes away from my ability to loan to people.

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 Post subject: Re: Kiva Lending Team
PostPosted: Tue Jul 24, 2018 9:20 am 
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I was gradually adding more and more credit for a while so I've got like $300 floating around, which basically allows me to make a loan or two every month.

LP if you give us your email we should be able to send an invite to the team.

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 Post subject: Re: Kiva Lending Team
PostPosted: Tue Jul 24, 2018 9:50 am 
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Big in Japan
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The Ghana shea nut picker I gave a loan to last year hasn't paid back a cent yet. Hope that's not the end of my original 25$ I've been re-lending over the years.

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 Post subject: Re: Kiva Lending Team
PostPosted: Tue Jul 24, 2018 10:36 am 
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E.L. wrote:
The Ghana shea nut picker I gave a loan to last year hasn't paid back a cent yet. Hope that's not the end of my original 25$ I've been re-lending over the years.


Were they a periodic payback or everything at the end?

I signed up for a med student in the Dominican I think who won't be paying back until sometime in the 2020s and will take years lol. Didn't pay close attention to the payback schedule when I went into that one.

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