Introducing Kiva's Nonfinancial Services Blog Series

The Community Outreach Team here at Kiva is incredibly excited to introduce to you a new series of guest blog speakers! As part of our ongoing effort to keep our extraordinary community of Kiva lenders and borrowers well-informed, we have partnered with several outstanding organizations to discuss the important topic of Nonfinancial Services (NFS), also known as “credit+” to reflect the belief of some that loans are not enough. These services are often offered to clients to meet a variety of social needs other than the need for capital.

While here at Kiva we specialize in financing micro-credit, we recognize that people around the world have unique situations that require a variety of solutions. As the field of development grows and evolves, it is becoming increasingly important that success be defined not only as financial gain, but also through social performance indicators. With this in mind, Kiva has begun to prioritize working with Field Partners that incorporate non-financial services into their overall package of client offerings (stay tuned to the blog for more on Kiva’s new social performance factors which will reward Kiva Field Partners who succeed in providing comprehensive social and financial services).

This blog series will cover the major NFS areas, including:

NFS 101: What are Nonfinancial Services?

Health Care Services - Freedom From Hunger
◦ Part 1: General Health Care Services
◦ Part 2: Health Care & Microfinance
◦ Part 3: ESPOIR & Health Care

Education - Microfinance Opportunities
◦ Part 1: Education
◦ Part 2: Education & Microfinance
◦ Part 3: Field Partner & Education

Women's Empowerment - Women's World Banking
◦ Part 1: Women’s Empowerment
◦ Part 2: Women’s Empowerment & Microfinance
◦ Part 3: Field Partner & Women’s Empowerment

Enterprise Services: EDA Rural Systems
◦ Part 1: Making ends meet: How enterprise services put lending in the right hands to help more borrowers
◦ Part 2: Help for India's honey business: The value of enterprise services for micro-entrepreneurs
◦ Part 3: Field Partner & Enterprise Services




For a brief introduction on Nonfinancial Services and how they are offered to clients, please check in tomorrow to read the NFS 101 blog post.

Follow us throughout this series as we bring in experts from the field to discuss each type of NFS and how they relate to microfinance.

We hope you enjoy learning about the different aspects of development that go hand-in-hand with microfinance, and we would like to thank our very special guest speakers who have made this series possible!