"WE ARE BETTER TOGETHER." PLEASE ACT NOW FOR ACTION NOW:KENYA

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[Jill]

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EDIT:   Lest anyone misunderstand:   
I continue to very deeply believe in Irene Kamau and the staff of the MFI she founded, Action Now: Kenya, and I await their reinstatement to Active status with inexpressible impatience.
Jill


EDIT #2:  And that's not to mention ANK's clientele, our Entrepreneurs, whom I very much want to mention and whom I very much believe in as well.
http://www.kivafriends.org/index.php/board,29.0.html

[Claus-Peter]

Uups 

[Peter S]

Another interesting tidbit (development??)

When you click on the link Field Partner Website:      View Website

from ANK's Field Partner page, it (now?) directs you to this page:
None.com

                                                                                                                                           

Once again,

                                                                                                                                                   

  Geoff

In fact this is evidence only of desperately sloppy template design by someone at Kiva who has failed to account for the case of no MIX profile and / or no website.  ANK does not have a MIX profile, and it doesn't have a website either, and never has had to my knowledge.

For other Kiva field partners where there is no MIX profile or website, such as Komak Credit Union, the relevant source code looks like this, to result in the non-hyperlinked word "None" appearing:

Code:

<a class="help" href="javascript:pop('app.php?page=help&action=otherInformationSources#mix_profile', 'Kiva_Help', 500, 500);">MIX Profile</a>:
</th>
<td>
None </td>

for ANK, it looks like this, resulting in the spurious link to none.com:

Code:

<a class="help" href="javascript:pop('app.php?page=help&action=otherInformationSources#mix_profile', 'Kiva_Help', 500, 500);">MIX Profile</a>:
</th>
<td>
<a href="http://None">View MIX Profile</a> </td>

I'm sure I've noticed at least one other field partner with no MIX profile / website where the same error occurs.  Amongst more importance instances of faulty system design (I too received today a 135% repayment of a loan, the same one reported by Wolfgang), this pretty witless failure to do some extremely simple quality control on a webpage hardly seemed worth mentioning when I spotted it.

In relation to the reduction to 1 star rating and the pausing of ANK, I'll say only that I hope that Kiva's ultimate response to some suspected violation of policies will be more carefully executed than the sloppy and witless programming seen above.  All the evidence we have seen so far about ANK is that under the direction of Irene Kamau it is doing a massively important and difficult job in bringing microloans and health education to a highly marginalized and vulnerable clientele, and is doing that job with an exemplary sense of duty and public service.  If there has been some technical infringement of policies, I trust that Kiva's first and only thought will be to ask itself how ANK can be helped to implement those policies.

Peter

[wthepoo]

In relation to the reduction to 1 star rating and the pausing of ANK, I'll say only that I hope that Kiva's ultimate response to some suspected violation of policies will be more carefully executed than the sloppy and witless programming seen above.  All the evidence we have seen so far about ANK is that under the direction of Irene Kamau it is doing a massively important and difficult job in bringing microloans and health education to a highly marginalized and vulnerable clientele, and is doing that job with an exemplary sense of duty and public service.  If there has been some technical infringement of policies, I trust that Kiva's first and only thought will be to ask itself how ANK can be helped to implement those policies.

Thank you, Peter - expressing my thoughts, exactly.

Even though I am relatively new to Kiva, I yet have noticed here and from my own experience with AN:K write-ups and journals that AN:K in certain ways seems to (positively) stand out from the mass of MFIs. That is why I still (want to) believe that the suspected infringements relate to formalities/technicalities or perhaps to the 30%-rule. On the other hand, pausing AN:K and refunding recently funded loans has been a rather drastic measure. Let's indeed hope and trust that Kiva will deal with it with a good sense of proportion, keeping the borrowers in mind as well as the lenders.

Take care,
Wolfgang.

[Diane R]

Jumping on the bandwagon, I can only agree wholeheartedly with all of the above.  AN:K has always shown such heart for their clients, and has unique or at least unusual practices such as shopping with their borrowers to ensure the funds lent were spent "as advertised", with borrowers who may not have as much experience with getting the best deal from a supplier.  These sorts of practices surely assist their clients to become more astute small businessmen and women, and help offer that hand up that Kiva enables so well.

I'm hoping to hear that this is all sorted out soon, and that things are well at AN:K, and that we may once again fund the loans that were refunded recently.

--Diane.

[Jan & John]

I totally understand that Kiva needs to ensure all MFI's are following the rules...

We at KF are the first to jump on Kiva staff when something goes haywire...

Just now we have to trust that this will just be a technicality that Kiva has to iron out...

I don't see that I have anything delinquent with AN:K but Diane, the Mama Mark fund has a lot, do they show anything???

And the quick response from Ben shows that all our complaining about communication has not been wasted on thin air 

I AM POSITIVE this will have a good outcome

(pollyanna) jan

[Diane R]

Jan, the Mark Agwonah Memorial lending account had 2 AN:K loans refunded before disbursement this week.  Almost all the other AN:K loans in that portfolio are paying in reasonable time.  There are a few seriously overdue loans (I counted 3 just now), but each of them has an individual write-up and explanation, two relating to the post-election violence which decimated the entrepreneurs' businesses, and one because of individual health issues.  I don't see any imbalance in the repayment practice for AN:K loans in the Mark Agwonah portfolio, compared with the other Kenyan MFIs.  Thanks for asking, it was a good exercise to do the research!

--Diane.

[wind5001]

Ok, it is really high time for me to step up and say something, too...had withheld for a while after noticing what has gone on.

I do understand that Kiva pauses MFI partnerships if they suspect some wrong doing. And, as Jan pointed out, it was us that asked Kiva for more and stricter application of their own set rules.

That said, I am really saddened by this. Simply because ANK has been so extraordinary, so dedicated, so special an MFI. I have never seen better write ups than theirs. I have never seen journal updates as informative as theirs (at times better than Kiva Fellows write ups). I know what they do in the field, and I know that Irene has her heart in the right spot. Thinking of our communications about the Fund and how to help Mama Mark.

It seems to me like ANK has been the only MFI in Kenya (maybe KMET, too) to take a proactive approach to handling the post election crisis. I am maddened that Ebony Foundation took KF support money and all that and still has not made a substantive effort to account for all loans. The ones in the Mark Fund mostly have stopped paying without a single line of individual explanation. ANK and Irene Kamau have taken a different approach. Yet, they seem to be more drastically treated by Kiva than EbF.

It reminds me of WedCo, too, where we simply don't hear anything. In so many ways, ANK has done outstanding work in Kenya.

Why, without further proof and without awaiting the future communications ANK had to be downgraded to 1 star rating escapes me completely. As Diane said, they are repaying their loans! Other MFIs don't. Take WedCo for example. They still have 4 stars and continue fundraising. And there was no news whatsoever on my loan with them for more than 4 months, I believe. I find that rather obscure.

Again, I understand that Kiva has to act. I deplore that it is ANK. It better be something really serious...because if it proves to be just a technicality then the heart-wrenching that must be going on in ANK's office now will come at a high price. 

[Claus-Peter]

It better be something really serious...because if it proves to be just a technicality then the heart-wrenching that must be going on in ANK's office now will come at a high price. 

To be honest, I am very afraid it will be something really serious. What I have learned from the last topics with MIFEX f.e. is, that things are starting slowly (f.e. reduction of rating) and then are getting more and more serious (up to criminal acts). Of course I hope that my feeling is wrong ...

Claus-Peter

[Jill]

Partly in response to what Claus-Peter wrote,  and partly because I've been concerned both because of the wording of the “ANK’s been paused” message and because of the conclusions that I was afraid people, inevitably, would draw from the action *, itself,  I’ve decided to post part of an e-mail I’d sent in what’s been a flurry of correspondence I've been involved in about all this over the last several days:


“…..Been thinking about what “X” wrote about how maybe more people aren't
posting on the Forum in support of Irene/ANK partly out of fear of
embarrassing themselves in the event that it's later revealed that Kiva
was smart and right to jump to action because ANK really has been up to no
good.


In fact, the same had crossed my own mind and was one of a multitude of
reasons why I'd felt inhibited, almost paralyzed in taking action, in
knowing what action to take, if any.  For some reason, it matters to me
that I not end up looking like a fool, some kind of dupe ….


I suppose that the way I resolved it for myself was to reach the
conclusion that if I have to be "guilty" of anything, then I'd prefer to
be guilty of believing too much in the goodness, the decency of someone
I've learned to care about.  And putting it out there that I do.


That that's preferable, for me, to my sitting back and playing it safe
because I'm worried I might be wrong and don't want to end up looking like
an idiot….”

All this is to say that no, I don't know anything for sure, but in this case, I do have a pretty strong faith, and I articulated it in my originally too cryptic, unintentionally silly "read between the lines" post, above.


*the action of removing ANK from active status, of preventing them from posting any more loans and of refunding the December entrepreneurs that they had posted