Students help through hands-on history course

What do a Mongolian butcher, an alfalfa farmer in Peru and a carpenter in Lebanon have in common? They are recipients of Kiva microloans funded by enterprising students from the Kansas City Art Institute.The students formed the KCAI Kiva Corps and, with just a $1,000 investment, they are making a difference in the lives of six families around the world. Kiva is a global, nonprofit organization with a mission to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty.“I’m always looking for ways to get students involved in community and finding hands-on ways to teach history,” KCAI history professor Hal Wert said. “After learning about Kiva, I decided to develop a class around the organization.” Wert believes that direct investment is the best way to help emerging nations. Kiva.org uses the Internet to put money directly into the hands of people in need, he said. Once a Kiva loan is repaid, the lender can choose to have the loan withdrawn or reinvested in Kiva. Last fall, 14 students signed up for Wert’s class “The History of Globalization,” designed to teach microfinance and how it has changed through globalization. In addition to class readings and tests, students were charged with setting up a bank account and fundraising to earn money.In doing so, they wound up learning geography, basic economic, marketing principles and organizational management skills. “Students did all the work,” Wert said. “I had them interview several of our vice presidents at the institute to learn specifics on finance, economics, promotion and communications.

Ultimately, the class is a lesson in how capitalism works.”The students found juggling traditional classes with work for the entrepreneurial KCAI Kiva Corps a bit challenging. “The class took more time than most of us anticipated,” Rachel Rolan said. Fellow student Rachel Kruse agreed.“Our goal was to have a fundraiser and then invest the money in Kiva. But we didn’t anticipate how much time it would take to coordinate everything,” Kruse said. After establishing the KCAI Kiva Corps, its bank account and Facebook page, the students made ceramic mugs and custom-printed T-shirts to sell, priced the items, promoted the fundraiser, and then held the fundraiser on the KCAI campus.Before selecting microloan recipients, the students researched which regions had the best repayment rates. Kiva loans have repayment terms ranging from one month to one year, based on the region and the borrower’s circumstances.At the end of the semester, KCAI Kiva Corps invested its $1,000 among entrepreneurs in six different countries: Mongolia, Peru, Lebanon, Uganda, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.“Our goal was to lend on as many continents as we could,” student Skye Livingston said. “Already, several of our borrowers have begun repaying their loans.” Internationally, Kiva has loaned more than $100 million since it was founded in 2005.Overall, the loan repayment rate for Kiva borrowers is 98.5 percent. Eighty percent of loan recipients are women. Next fall, KCAI students will have the opportunity to take Wert’s class on the history of globalization and create their own fundraiser to help grow the KCAI Kiva Corps. Several of the founding KCAI Kiva students plan to stay involved and share what they have learned.“It was such a great experience,” Kruse said. “It got us out of our student bubble and into thinking about the real world and globalization.”“You always hear about everything that is wrong with our world,” Livingston said. “Through our class, we were able to do some good and see the results. We were able to make a difference.”

Posted March 16, 2011

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