Kiva Community Conference Call with Premal Shah, Jan 14th 2009 - Discussion

[Guest]

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[Patricia SF]

Hello,

During today's conference call, was there any word on our Palestine borrowers?  A bunch of us have been terribly worried about them.

Thank you.

Patricia 

[wthepoo]

Hello,

During today's conference call, was there any word on our Palestine borrowers?  A bunch of us have been terribly worried about them.

Thank you.

Patricia 

Hi Patricia,
as far as I understood it from what was mentioned in the chat, "Kiva" (the staffers on the call) did not know any particulars (not even that one loan recently defaulted), but mentioned that Ryada is still active and that they will continue posting loans - with the obvious risk of future defaults shouldn't the situation change dramatically.

Maybe someone who was on the call can correct me if I got it wrong or elaborate?

Best wishes,
Wolfgang.

[Liliane]

I sent in a PM'd question about Ryada to Fiona, but was not able to stay on the call long enough to hear the answer. I did, however email CHF, Ryada's partner, a few days ago, and got this reply.

Dear Liliane,

 

Thank you for your ongoing support and good wishes for our program; we are all sending our best efforts and wishes for an end to this to West Bank/Gaza right now.  Ryada is still intact and all staff are unharmed at present and we hope that this does not change.  Ryada is, unfortunately, rather accustomed for these sorts of circumstances and has strong security measures in place to keep our operations up and running, so they will not be closing and will certainly be doing what they can to help clients through their rebuilding efforts when things calm down.

 

Thank you again for your concern,


Christina

It doesn't answer any questions about the borrowers, but at least we know Ryada itself has not been destroyed, and that they plan to conitue, and it sounds as though they have been through crises before.
Liliane

[Diane R]

You'll see more details in the summary that will be posted here by either Peter or me in the next few days.  The status of Ryada was mentioned, and Kiva staff reported that 20% of their loans were to Gaza residents, and 80% to West Bank residents.  They evaluated the sustainability and health of Ryada even if all of the Gaza loans were to default, and felt they were still sustainable, so Ryada is still posting loans on Kiva.  They mentioned that lenders could just avoid loans to Gaza residents; several of us pointed out that this information was not provided to us as lenders, as the borrowers' privacy was being protected via "unspecified location" entries.  The Kiva staff agreed that this was not helpful, and stated they would inform Ryada that they will need to indicate the general location of a borrower is important for lenders' knowledge, if they want to continue to post loans.

They also said they did not know of any problems with Ryada loans, so I mentioned Suzan Hamoudeh's loan which defaulted almost immediately after it had been disbursed, which has troubled and worried many of us.  They had no further information, but seemed to me surprised to hear about Suzan's loan.

An interesting statistic is that Ryada has the highest "raised per day" total of any Kiva MFI.  Strong demand from lenders to support loans from that area.

--Diane.

[Patricia SF]

Wolfgang, Liliane, Diane, and Dottie,

My heartfelt "thank you" for the update.

Patricia   

[Dottie b]

I believe Fiona told us on the chat that Kiva would ask Ryada to respond to Diane's message.

Dottie B

[Sengbe Pieh]

You'll see more details in the summary that will be posted here by either Peter or me in the next few days.  The status of Ryada was mentioned, and Kiva staff reported that 20% of their loans were to Gaza residents, and 80% to West Bank residents.  They evaluated the sustainability and health of Ryada even if all of the Gaza loans were to default, and felt they were still sustainable, so Ryada is still posting loans on Kiva.  They mentioned that lenders could just avoid loans to Gaza residents; several of us pointed out that this information was not provided to us as lenders, as the borrowers' privacy was being protected via "unspecified location" entries.  The Kiva staff agreed that this was not helpful, and stated they would inform Ryada that they will need to indicate the general location of a borrower is important for lenders' knowledge, if they want to continue to post loans.

They also said they did not know of any problems with Ryada loans, so I mentioned Suzan Hamoudeh's loan which defaulted almost immediately after it had been disbursed, which has troubled and worried many of us.  They had no further information, but seemed to me surprised to hear about Suzan's loan.

An interesting statistic is that Ryada has the highest "raised per day" total of any Kiva MFI.  Strong demand from lenders to support loans from that area.

--Diane.

I just wanted to point out that I mentioned to the Kiva staff that there info on Ryada was wrong.

                                                                                                                                                       

There are only 7 loans posted by Ryada. The first 2, including Suzan's, are listed as Location undisclosed, Palestine.

The next 5 are listed: Location: gaza, Palestine.

                                   

Therefore, ~71.43% of the loans are known to be to borrowers in Gaza with remaining ~28.57% unknown (either Gaza or the West Bank if the info provided is correct)

                                                                                                                                               

And from what I understand from the call, Dottie is correct; Kiva plans on contacting Ryada to expedite an answer regarding Suzan Hamoudeh.

                                                                                                                                         

Here is the link to the Ryada loans: http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&queryString=Ryada&status=All&gender=All&sectors=All&regions=All&sortBy=Old+to+New

                                                                     

EDIT: I realize after reading Peter's summary that I misunderstood what Kiva said & what Diane posted. 80% of Ryada's total loan portfolio is in the West Bank & only 20% in Gaza.

     

[Natasha]

Word of the Day:      BASKETHOARDING
 

I think that it's great!  Shame on us! 

[Tatiana]

It was a very nice and interesting experience, to be (a silent) part of this conference call

I think it is great that Kiva is doing this, and it restored a lot of my confidence in and enthusiasm for Kiva.

I had a few questions but it turned out I didn't have the courage to ask them. Next time I'll be better prepared or I'll ask them in the chat if I'm still to cowardly.

Thanks Kiva, and thanks Kivafriends participating!

[Jan & John]

It was a very nice and interesting experience, to be (a silent) part of this conference call

I think it is great that Kiva is doing this, and it restored a lot of my confidence in and enthusiasm for Kiva.

I had a few questions but it turned out I didn't have the courage to ask them. Next time I'll be better prepared or I'll ask them in the chat if I'm still to cowardly.

Thanks Kiva, and thanks Kivafriends participating!

I feel the same, Tatiana, the folks at Kiva are real people working hard to do their best...

It's also really nice to have 'other' folks do the talking for me

but it's also very nice to hear real voices to put with names of people I now consider a friend.

That is the best part of KF for me... to find people who care so very much.

jan