Ugandan microfinance on PBS
My friend Clark Boyd, who did a great deal of innovative work on the BBC/WGBH collaboration “The World”, has an amazing story airing on many PBS stations tonight. He began researching Kiva, a group that works to connect individuals in the developed world with projects in the developing world, allowing individuals to be effective microlenders. Clark got sufficiently interested in the story that he travelled to Uganda to see how these loans worked and what sort of impact they had on recipients - that piece airs tonight on Frontline/World, alongside a story about repression in Burma. I’ll be driving back from Boston, so will catch it on Tivo, but you should tune in your local PBS if you happen to be in the US. (I’ll look for a link to an online version of the story or a YouTube video after the story goes live…)
October 31st, 2006 at 3:57 pm
[...] Global Voices readers are surely dedicated to staying informed about the rest of the world. But the Internet can also enable us to make positive change. “La Gringa” describes how Kiva lets internet users invest in microcrediting loans around the world. Just two days after writing about Honduran loan applicants in waiting, their loans were met and two other bloggers were inspired to pitch in and spread the word. “La Gringa” writes, “all of the requested Kiva loans that I wrote about on October 25 have been funded. Did Matthew, a Canadian teacher in Honduras, Ruthy, a Honduran-American in Missouri, and I have anything to do with this or is it a coincidence? I’d like to think we have made a difference!” Kiva has also received attention at WorldChanging, The New Yorker, and on Ethan Zuckerman’s blog. A Frontline/World story by Clark Boyd about Kiva will begin airing on PBS stations in the US tonight. David Sasaki [...]
November 1st, 2006 at 8:43 am
Excellent find Ethan and it fits in nicely with the recent attention given to Dr. Muhammed Yunus and the Grameen Bank’s work in microfinance. Fortunately for those of us who do not live in North America, PBS Frontline and Wide Angle program video features are generally made available for viewing on their website. PBS Frontline states that this feature will be accessable via for the Net on November 7, 2006.
What’s TIVO?
November 1st, 2006 at 11:01 am
Thanks, BRE - glad I’ll be able to catch it once it makes it to the Internet (I didn’t drive home fast enough to see the program on the TV.)
Tivo is the most popular of the commercial digital video recorders for sale in the US - it’s sufficiently popular here that “tivo” has become a verb, which basically means “program your digital video recorder to record something in your absence…”
November 2nd, 2006 at 2:22 am
Hi Ethan,
Thank you for your post on Kiva. We are completely humbled by the response generated by the Frontline documentary. By writing about it, you’ve provided your readers with a unique way of getting connected to something worthwhile, in a practical manner. Please encourage your readers to keep trying to get through; there are over 300 businesses waiting to be partnered with. Thanks for caring!
Regards,
Tim (volunteer with Kiva.org)
November 3rd, 2006 at 6:24 pm
Microfinance is a myth. If you really want to present a viable solution to eradicating poverty look into the work of Dr. Abraham George. Below is a link to one of his articles published by Wharton Business School.
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/india/article.cfm?articleid=4114&specialid=1&CFID=1824805&CFTOKEN=37907590