A letter and a video from one of the Kiva field partners. This helps explain why you loan money to Kiva interest free, but the people who get the loan pay interest. That money is not making some big maga-bank richer. But it is re-invested in the form of business education, schools, and admin staff. Because the small community bank does not have to pay interest to us, they can use more of the funds they have to help the community.

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Dear Devin Rankin,

Thank you for supporting entrepreneurs in Paraguay.

Dear Kiva Lender,



My name is Nick Cain and I am writing to you from Asunción, Paraguay, where I have been volunteering as a Kiva Fellow for the past four months. At some point since becoming a Kiva lender, you made a loan to a Paraguayan entrepreneur. By doing so, you joined a group of people who have collectively invested over $2.3 million in this country (a figure that astounds me each and every time I write it), and for that, I would like to start by saying thank you. Because of you, bricks are made, dresses are sewn, cell phones are sold, and mounds and mounds of Paraguay’s most popular snack, chipa, are cooked and eaten. Your money moves this economy.

The Field Partner: Fundación Paraguaya



As you may know, all Kiva loans are disbursed and administered by Field Partners—local institutions who vet clients and collect payments. In Paraguay, your capital flows through Fundación Paraguaya, a 24-year-old organization with a remarkable history and a bold social mission. Led by its founder, Martín Burt, Fundación Paraguaya brought microfinance to Paraguay in 1985, at a time when the country was still controlled by Alfredo Stroessner, an iron-fisted, secret police-wielding dictator whose maniacal 35-year rule left his country poor, uneducated, and disastrously bereft of infrastructure. But, with a touch of irony that is familiar to many microfinance practitioners, the same set of circumstances that left so many Paraguayans entrenched in poverty also created an informal economy that was teeming with micro-entrepreneurs and, Martín believed, hungry for credit. A chance meeting with a representative from microfinance pioneer ACCION International inspired Martín to act on his hunch that, for Paraguayans trying to lift themselves out of poverty, access to capital would be the key.

The Leader



After 24 years, three major international awards, and one term as mayor of Asunción, Martín Burt is still at the helm of Fundación Paraguaya, preaching the doctrine of sustainability and innovation to his team (now over 150 people strong) of managers, teachers, and loan officers. Since 1985, Fundación Paraguaya has disbursed over $37.5 million in loans to entrepreneurs across the country. Because it is a non-profit organization, when Fundación Paraguaya earns money on its loan portfolio, the money is re-invested into the operating budgets of its other innovative social ventures: a business education program for young people, two self-sufficient agricultural high schools, and a recently-announced Poverty Eradication Project that is every bit as ambitious as it sounds.



Recently, I sat down with Martín to hear a little more about how
Fundación Paraguaya got started, where he sees it going, and how the
interest-free capital provided by lenders like you helps more than just
a single borrower. Check out the interview in the video below.

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