skylarwoodward

I am constantly amazed at the intersection of Kiva with emerging topics in the developing world and the world of interest around me. The intersections are not happening because I’m so aware of Kiva or because I’m looking for them, but because Kiva is making an amazing impact on the world in need and the people that want to help it. If I was somehow blind to the existence of Kiva, these close encounters would still be as silent near-miss bullets fired from a sixth story window two hundred meters away. It is either that the world was thirsting for this network to be put in place, or it demonstrates the true power that emerging networks have to make a big world small.

The first intersection happened when a group of friends were watching a film on the Invisible Children of Uganda. At the end of the homemade documentary, the filmmakers challenge the viewers to think creatively about how they can help these kids. We did, and of course we all felt like we needed to know a lot more about the politics, laws, and history of the situation to even begin to offer a suggestion. Even after doing my own study, I felt powerless from my place in the world. Two days later, this loan appears for a man in Acholiland who wants to build a house for his family to establish stability in this region beset with unrest. Not only that, but this man will repay his loans with a new job working for the Invisible Children Bracelet Project advertised in the film. Needless to say, I didn’t hesitate to help fund the loan.
Almost a week later, Jeremy and I saw three festival films in one day, and of the two documenatries screened, both had loans on Kiva posted that week for people represented by each film. The most unlikey of connections being these gypsy musicians who we can only guess are cousins to the same Roma musicians represented in the Shutka Book of Records.

In browsing links last week for technology initiatives related to the emergent church movement, I noticed this company, working on creative applications of technology to their faith, published progress on their Kiva loan and commented to their readers in how it encouraged them in their own desire to bring help to people that need it.

However, today’s find tops it all. (in fact, matt was screaming this to me a week ago and i apologize for being slow to the sync.) Microsoft Research was looking for compelling use cases to drive reasearch in bringing technology to underserved communities, both rural and urban. Through Carl and Jon they found Kiva, and funded a study to document the barriers exposed by Kiva for Ugandan loan officers who must use an assemblage of completely foriegn technologies (computers, cameras, Internet…) to make peer-to-peer microfinance a reality. It’s a usability study opportunity that would make any Yahoo! UE researcher wet their pants, and it is beautiful.