Micro-Loans Offer Big Help To Entrepreneurs

“I just thought that it was like, a really simple organization, you could see the money going into the hands of real people who needed it,” Matt said.

It takes about 30 seconds to set up an account on Kiva.org to start making loans to people like Juma Motatiro, a bicycle taxi driver in Kenya who needed an $800 loan to help his wife set up a restaurant.
 
I sent Juma $25, and he started paying me back right on schedule. But I always wondered where they money really went, and how Juma and his wife were doing. So we went to Africa to check on Juma and two other Kiva borrowers to see for ourselves whether Kiva really works. 

It was a long trip to Nakuru, Kenya, a gritty city of 300,000. We had asked for Juma to meet us. All we had was his Kiva photo, but we recognized him right away.

Juma spoke little English, but with the help of an interpreter, he agreed to take us around town and tell us his story.

Juma started out a few years as a security guard, and then he started renting a bicycle taxi.  He saved enough money after a year to buy his own bicycle and he's been a bicycle taxi ever since. But competition is tough and in spite of working 16 hours a day, he could barely support his wife and six children. But then a passenger told him about Kiva and everything changed.
Juma used the money to help his wife Nancy set up a little restaurant, and right away, business was booming. The line for Nancy's rice and beans, flatbread and tea was out the door.

It is still a tough life, and they improvise a lot — a plastic bag for a cash register, an upside down pot for a grill, and a soda bottle for a rolling pin.

There's also no plumbing, so Juma carries water and other supplies on his bicycle. Or on his back. But at the end of the day, they have enough to break even — and then some — for the first time in their lives.  On this particular day, it’s 700 Kenya shillings, or about $14.

The added income has put a new roof over their heads. They used to live in a one-room mud shack in a rough part of town. And while their new home isn’t fancy, it is made of concrete and has electricity and a metal door, which means security for the family.

James Maina is director of the Ebony Foundation, a non-profit group focused on fighting poverty, and Kiva’s local partner in Kenya. He says there is virtually no other institution in the world that would loan someone like Juma money.

“I don't know of any institution that would give him money based on the business he's doing,” Maina said.

“And even Ebony itself, was it not for Kiva, I'm not very sure whether we would have done that,” he continued. 

CONTINUED: Compassion turned into micro loans

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