News and Events: June 2008 Archives

It's amazing that it's already been a couple of months since the official launch party for KivaB4B. This video is short and sweet, but gives a real flavor of the event which seemed to find a balance between shwanky and home grown. I suppose it was the friends who were visiting from a bunch of different countries and the DJ spinning tribal electronica. Check it out.

For those of you have never been to a music festival in Northern California, it's hard to put it into words. You have the chance to meet unique people named, 'Noodle,' 'Crystal Head' and 'Bike Hugger.' You may even have a chance to take a 'Hippie Bath,' which I learned is a head to toe spritzing of, in my case, lavender scented holy water. If you are trying to set up a booth, don't depend on finding things very easily. There are good intentions and then there's good organization...and perhaps the two don't always go together.

That said, it was a fascinating experience and we learned a lot about how people respond to microcredit, in general, and Kiva and KivaB4B, in particular.

Our first takeaway was that people love Kiva...see my post 'To Know Kiva is to Love Kiva.'  Talking about KivaB4B and the co-branded card was easy with this group.

However, it wasn't as easy to bridge the gap between some of the other groups we encountered. For example:

1. There were many folks who had heard of Kiva...they would say something like, "oh, yeah...I remember Kiva. I heard about them on Oprah." 
2. Then, there were those who had heard of micro credit, but not Kiva.
   
3. Finally, there were those who hadn't heard of either, but were pulled in by the 'helping entrepreneurs' message.
   

Talking about microcredit and Kiva was easy. We could actually invite people into the experience. However, finding a way to take that step to the credit card will take some creative thinking.