Wellshire Microfinance Report: April, 2013

The One Acre Fund
In Kenya, farmers have been given the opportunity to more than double their crop production. Through a partnership between KADET, the microlending arm of World Vision, and KIVA, farmers can receive help in buying seeds and fertilizer at lower prices and also receive consulting services at no charge for one acre of crop production. Not only does the increase in production create more income for the farmers, which helps their families, but it also enables them to buy dairy cows and chickens with the help of loans, which gives them another source of income and provides more protein in their families’ diets. If you look at the microloans available on Kiva’s website today, you will see numerous requests for loans to buy dairy cows and poultry. This is only possible because agricultural production has increased.

Are You Investing Your Loan Paybacks?
In the last two months, our Wellshire Microfinance account has accrued $212.63 in loan paybacks. We will invest this money at our May meeting (third Thursday, May 16 at 12:00 pm). If you haven’t checked your own account lately, you may find you have money to reinvest. It’s easy to do: Click on My Portfolio. Enter your email address and password. You should see a bubble that tells you how much has been repaid. Then go to Lend. When you select a recipient for your loan, Kiva will automatically deduct the amount in your account from the cost of your loan at checkout. If your loan is for $25 and you have $15 in your account, the cost of your loan will be $10. This is the fun part of Kiva microlending!

Results for April
In April our team made ten loans worth $250. Our cumulative totals are now 462 loans worth $11,900. If we make an effort to reinvest our account balances in May, we should hit 500 loans by the end of May. Let’s keep on truckin’!