Working with Kiva and Microfinanzas Prisma in Huancayo
One of the objectives of our trip was to spend some time volunteering for various organizations, and getting to know the area and meeting the people that way. We volunteered with Friendship Bridge and Kiva.org in Guatemala last year, and Kiva was kind enough to set up a task in Huancayo and Tarma, Peru. Our job was to visit loan recipients, interview them so that we could write update their profiles on Kiva, and verify that the loan data were all correct.
Two marvellous young women hauled us all over the back country of Peru searching out the selected Kiva borrowers. In Huancayo we took more buses in one day than we could have imagined, visiting what seemed like dozens of little villages outside the city. In Tarma they arranged a 4-wheel-drive and a driver to haul us all over creation to find the clients. In one case we spent about an hour and a half climbing one incredible road up to a remote village... and then found that the woman was not home! However, we eventually found her husband and he was delightful.
We found out a few things in our few days of volunteering:
- Microfinance is helping lots of tiny businesses in Peru.
- People like you are providing lots of capital for these tiny businesses through Kiva.org
- The microfinance provider Microfinanzas Prisma is handing its clients well - we found a few discrepancies, but they were tiny, and all the clients we visited were real people, not any kind of fraud.
Some links you'd like to find out more about microfinance:
- A hobobiker article about Microfinance
- Try out Kiva.org
- Read our other articles about Kiva, Friendship Bridge, and Microfinance
Elizabeth Chagua Boris with in Caritá (View on flickr)
Randy and Nancy with Roxana in Orcotuna (View on flickr)
Clotilde Mirte Huangal Huari in her little general store (View on flickr)
