Reed Students Help Others Through Microlending Program

By Eliza Hallabeck

After purchasing lunch at Reed Intermediate School, students in Peter Bernson and Carla Tischio’s cluster or in Karen King and Al Washicko’s cluster have the choice to toss their leftover change into collection buckets for a lending program Ms Tischio brought to the school this year.

Once the change accrues to $25, Ms King said students then use a website, www.kiva.org, to look through and choose people to whom they would like to lend the collected money .

Ms Tischio learned about the website a few years ago through her church.

The website, according to Kiva, is the world’s first microlending website created to allow individuals the opportunity to lend entrepreneurs around the world different sums of money to promote their businesses.

“You literally can shop for who you want to help,” said Ms King, while looking over projects students in her cluster have already funded since the start of the school year in September.

So far students in Ms King’s cluster have helped three people by saving $75 worth of change from lunches. By collecting change, Ms King said, the students are not asked to go home and request monetary contributions from their families. Ms Tischio and Ms King said the money will be returned to the students at the end of the school year, when the lending period for the loans are over.

At that point, Ms King said she will give the students a choice. They can either choose to take their money back, or they can choose to save the money for next year’s students to add to, creating larger loan amounts for next year.

“They do keep putting money in,” said Ms Tischio, on the success of the program with the students.  “So they are definitely interested.”

After seeing a Kiva presentation at her church, Ms Tischio said she talked about it for a couple years with Ms King regarding how to bring it to the school.

“This is sort of experimental,” said Ms Tischio. “We wanted to present it to the whole school, and see if the whole school could do it. And, it seemed like the right year to try it, because our theme was Peace. We had the big Peace rally at the beginning of the year, and this is certainly a way of generating peace.”

Mr Bernson said it is also a way to promote a global understanding with students, at a time that the social studies curriculum is being looked at. The Kiva lending program was first introduced to the students during a unity and diversity unit in Mr Bernson’s and Ms Tischio’s cluster.

“We all have the same needs,” said Ms Tischio, “and these people also have the needs of shelter and food. And they need to make money to have those things, just like we do. They are also creative business people, who have things to make and things to sell. We can help them with that.”

Mr Bernson said the goal was to have a connection between studying people in the Western Hemisphere, and they were helping people in the Western Hemisphere. After looking for loans though, the choices were limited to loans that could be returned by the end of the school year.

So far, students in Ms Tischio’s and Mr Bernson’s cluster have helped two people through Kiva. The cluster raised money and helped Elena Ugarte De Tomon in Peru, who used the loan she received from the cluster and from 13 other lenders to purchase and sell food and soft drinks. On her Kiva profile, Elena said her dream is to have a restaurant. The cluster also helped Ilhom Ortikov in Tajikistan purchase cattle to promote more income for his family.

Ms King’s and Mr Washiko’s cluster have helped three people so far through Kiva. The cluster has helped Beatriz Ugay in the Philippines by helping to provide money for feed for her piggery business, Lucy Wanjiku Ndegwa, who dreams of selling clothes, in Kenya by helping her raise money to purchase a sewing machine and a computer for her business, and the cluster has helped support Sergei Onischenko in the Ukraine to purchase office supplies for his business.

More information about Kiva and its program can be found at www.kiva.org.