At the moment Kiva 'All Kiva Partners' reports 77.26% Loans to Women Entrepreneurs. I don't know the proportion that are groups and how this affects the figure just quoted. All I can say is that group loans are a significant proportion of the loans - at the moment with 660 loans fundraising right now 204 include the word group in their title (
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=Vhz1kzqC3BGAFF0zYEsBXw&descriptionsearch=Group).
I think it would be remiss of us not to include a group loan or two where possible, as it would give a false impression of Kiva - something we diligently tried to avoid last year in ensuring the broadest range of countries (ie no duplicates), genders, business types. We did have to squeeze in some male entrepreneurs last year - if it had been a straight up vote (from memory) none of them would have made it. Though the calendar was still very well received and all of the pictures held their own.
Many of the points made about group loans this year, were made about male entrepreneurs last year. I think we have more groups in this year than we had male entrepreneurs last year.
Including a group loan or two also provides us with an opportunity (as Wolfgang put so well) and that was in the back of my mind (but not in so many words) when I compiled this poll:
[snip] we could remain rather vague in the description of that particular group (focusing on location, number of members, possibly their relationship [members of a village bank, etc.]) and use the remaining space to highlight why group loans are such an important method in micro-finance and how they work (joint-liability).
Like others I too prefer pictures that show the entrepreneur in their work environment, so group loans are always low down on my list. I prefer the work situation as that is the important aspect, thinking about it a little more in light of Wolfgang's wise words the important thing about groups is joint-liability so a good group picture with happy smiles and a sense of unity etc has just gone up in my estimation. I doubt that more than 2 (or perhaps 3) of these loans will make it into the final calendar.
If I were voting I would sigh at the poor quality of the all male group (nil points), and hope that one or both of the mixed groups get a good number of votes, there are several all female groups that I think would be popular choices. For balance I don't think we can just have all female groups representing the groups in the final calendar, and I am keeping my fingers crossed that the voting allows a mixed group in.
I think it was Christopher that set up a page on KF that was provided on the calendar for finding further information about the entrepreneurs...
It was Joe that set up a page as a jumping off point to the highlighted entrepreneurs:
http://calendar.kivafriends.org/Not sure how much traffic it got, but we posted the URL on the back of the calendar - an this year's draft has it as well.
Poll
