Journals on Website

[Guest]

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[AccountAbility]

It's time Kiva re-visits the way journals are handled on the website. 

There is no way to sort or find anything among the over 800 pages of chronological journals.  Please put a "sort by" option or at least a "search" for a business name(or person's name referencing a discussion on another thread.)

Also when viewing a borrower's page, the journals are listed at the bottom --without the "recommend" button (whatever that is for  ).  So either add it there or do away with it.   

And the link above the journal saying "return to journals" should go to the page on which that journal is displayed--not the first page of 800+ pages.  Then at least we could hit the "recommend" button on journals about our own loans.  If we all hit the button a certain number of times, is there a prize?   

[Joe]

I second this suggestion. A re-design of the Journals section would be wonderful. Maybe sorting them by MFI would work, along with other options like Date and region maybe. How about an archive section where the journals of completed loans go? That way only active loans are displayed and you don't see 800 pages containing all journals.

As for the recommend button, there is a column on the right side of the Journals page titled "Recently Recommended". I always figured that button was so you could cast your vote and get stuff you liked featured in that area. If so, then many people aren't using it. Out of all Kiva's users, the list has top recommended journals of 5 to 8 votes. A few of us here could probably get together and bump people to the top pretty easily.

Anyway, I'd also add some translating functions that would load the text of the journals at a site like Babel Fish or Google Translate, since many of the journals are in other languages. I wonder if that is part of why people aren't using/recommending much. In fact after scanning through the 5 recently recommended journals, I noticed they all posted good updates/payment reports in English.

[Wood Fairy Glenda]

My beef with the journal section is that there's no way on my Portfolio or Lender Page to see if anyone's posted anything other than "This loan has been dispursed to....."  I've actually received some very nice updates, but when I went to my Lender Page to try to find them so I could respond, it took the better part of an hour.  I can't keep them indefinitely in my mail file (though I do, usually, copy them and add them to a special Word file) because the mail account gets over-filled.  This time I just forgot.

Anyway........ It would make me very happy  if there were some indication on my Lender Page that an "Update" had been received.  A simple dot would do quite well.

[AccountAbility]

Our Portfolio has a list of our loans.  While the summaries only show disbursement date and amount repaid, if I click on any loan there, all the journals are listed down at the bottom (just above repayment schedule).  It would be nice if maybe a star could be put in that summary box for each journal or update, giving a signal that there is something more to look at in the detail. 

Ideally, it would show "journals posted since last login" in that slot. 

But so far, the email notice is enough for us to check the detail in our loans.  We actually track journals and dates for each loan we hold along with the financial details, all in a spreadsheet.

[Wood Fairy Glenda]

I'd love to see "Journals posted since last log-in," on the Lender Page or Portfolio.  My problem, of course, is that I've made far too many small loans (close to 200 now) to keep up with, and, if anything else is on the agenda (like this week - I had to write two articles) and I don't get around to saving the updates in my special file, I end up deleting them  because my mailbox gets too full.  Then, if I have to click on each of my many borrowers to find the one with the update it takes forever.

[AccountAbility]

So maybe we have an answer here to the request to see "Journals posted since last log-in".  Although Kiva is calling it "News for You".

http://www.kivafriends.org/index.php/topic,1179.msg11829.html#msg11829

It sure would be nice if Kiva added a "what's new" section to the website so we could figure out these things, rather than stumbling on it or reading about it here.

Dan

[Natasha]

Wasn't sure where to post this, so here is as good as any, since its about journals..

Was just looking through the "about us" section and under this http://www.kiva.org/about/pic_model. I saw this about journals that I thought was interesting which has probably been there forever, but I haven't seen this before (bold added for emphasis):

Partnership Selection Requirements
Operational Requirements
In order to work effectively with Kiva, a microfinance institution must be able to:
Take digital photographs of borrowers
Write borrower and business descriptions
Write at least one journal entry per borrower (i.e. business update)
Upload photographs, business descriptions and journal entries to the Kiva website
Communicate via email and access the Internet regularly
Speak English, Spanish or French
Legally accept US dollar debt from a foreign lender and be able to repatriate funds
Manage foreign exchange risk

Reporting
Kiva's social investors provide subsidized capital in exchange for impact transparency. MFIs must report on the social impact of clients at least once per loan term.

Ok - I may have misread this, but I think that it is saying that at least one journal entry (not just a repayment or disbursement notification) is required for each loan. That's great, if that's the case. I really look forward to the journal entries!

[AccountAbility]

Natasha, there are probably at least three threads going on the subject of Journals.  So this one is as good as any for your post.  Another one is here:
http://www.kivafriends.org/index.php/topic,256.0.html

It is sections such as you quoted that give rise to the expectations that lenders will see journals on their loans.  But sometimes that is far from the case.

Kendall Mau, head of Prisma, wrote here and on his blog a few months ago about how difficult it is for an MFI to meet this expectation.  They had a Fellow for a few months who was able to write up only a small portion of all their loans, even though working on it quite aggressively.  It does remain an issue.

Dan

[Natasha]

Natasha, there are probably at least three threads going on the subject of Journals.  So this one is as good as any for your post.  Another one is here:
http://www.kivafriends.org/index.php/topic,256.0.html

It is sections such as you quoted that give rise to the expectations that lenders will see journals on their loans.  But sometimes that is far from the case.

Kendall Mau, head of Prisma, wrote here and on his blog a few months ago about how difficult it is for an MFI to meet this expectation.  They had a Fellow for a few months who was able to write up only a small portion of all their loans, even though working on it quite aggressively.  It does remain an issue.

Dan

Thanks Dan,
Yes I have even posted in that thread too!

There have been numerous discussions on journal entries and the difficulties about MFIs keeping them up (we have even been on the same discussions about them from a product/business perspective) .
 So I actually wasn't posting it for that reason. I just found it really interesting the "terms" (for want of a better word) that Kiva has specified for Field Partners and that this actually one of them.

Actually the rest of that section is really interesting also and I think that if some of the newbies read there first, we wouldn't be getting the kinds of enquiries we have been getting here lately. But then again, its a nice way for new people to come by and visit here and get to know us too and hopefully stay with us.

[KivanSteven]

We should have a section for links newbies should read to better familiarize themselves with the more detailed info of kiva and kivafriends,...but maybe thats what FAQ is for....it would be difficult to keep something like that updated when it comes to info on kivafriends because things move a bit fast and it would constantly have to be edited and added to or removed from....more work than its worth...so in the long run it really is good that newbies ask us all these questions because it gives us the opportunity to draw them in and make some sort of influence on them.