How to Lend Money to Refugees, with Lev Plaves

This is a special interview for me. HTLMTS doesn't pull in huge volumes of listeners, but that's OK, that's not really what I'm after. I want the right listeners, not the most listeners, and so I get excited when a guest tells me they got a business lead after their interview, or when one guest asks to be set up with another for some new project, or when, like today, I get to look inside a company that I've long admired.

Kiva first came into my consciousness in 2006 as an early grad school project. I actually tried to back this up with some old PowerPoints, but although I found an old CD with 'MBA files' scribbled on it, it turns out we don't have a CD reader on any of the computers in this house, so you'll just have to take my word for it 🤣 Anyway, the point is they're a foundational fintech, and one with a social drive to boot.

Today I'm chatting to Lev Plaves about the ways in which Kiva has evolved since my school project, and in particular how he and his team are lending money to refugees. The Kiva Refugee Investment Fund successfully closed with $32.5 million, and they're multiplying that impact by following an open approach, sharing their lending results as they go, so others can take heart from the fact that loan officers now say that "refugees are now the first people they look to, because of what their performance has been and how strong they've been as clients".

Kiva is, of course, at https://www.kiva.org/ but then you'll want to jump straight to the refugee tab - I'm helping Ali put up solar panels and Alaa with her sewing business, for example.

You can reach out to Lev and the team by email via refugees@kiva.org

You can learn more about myself, Brendan le Grange, on my LinkedIn page (feel free to connect), my action-adventure novels are on Amazon, some versions even for free, and my work with ConfirmU and our gamified psychometric scores is at https://confirmu.com/ and on episode 24 of this very show https://www.howtolendmoneytostrangers.show/episodes/episode-24

If you have any feedback, questions, or if you would like to participate in the show, please feel free to reach out to me via the contact page on this site.

Regards,

Brendan

The full written transcript, with timestamps, is below:

Lev Plaves 0:00

"Refugee" describes what happened to them, but it is not who they are.

You know, one of the things that I hear over and over again is, refugees who say "I want to be seen not as a refugee, but as an entrepreneur, I want to be seen not as a refugee, but a small business owner".

Brendan Le Grange 0:19

The Edict of Nantes was signed in 1598 to officially 'tolerate' Protestants in France. So when it was revoked by Louis XIV in 1685, the position of French Protestants, among whom was a Calvinists group known as the Huguenots, became untenable.

In reaction to that, a 21 year old stonemason by the name of Pierre Grange left his hometown in Cabrières-d'Aigues, Provence, and together with his cousin Louis Corbon, trekked over the Alps to Switzerland, then northward up the Rhine Valley to Frankfurt, and from there to Rotterdam. You may have heard of these Huguenots in your own countries - numbering about half a million in total, they spread around the world... to the Netherlands to Switzerland to Scandinavia, the UK and Ireland. But the two cousins from our story had a different destination in mind. In Rotterdam on the 20th of March 1688, they boarded the China, a 160 foot wooden ship that five months later docked in Table Bay, Cape Town, my hometown, and one you really should visit.

I can trace my family line directly back to that Pierre Grange, the young refugee who fled religious persecution 340 years ago. When Pierre and Louis and the other Huguenots boarded the ships for South Africa, though, they were given funds to get themselves established and opportunities to work and join the community. 14 years after landing, Pierre was a property owner, a dream that is sadly beyond most modern day refugees.

So this is How to Lend Money to Refugees with Brendan Le Grange.

Lev Plaves, welcome to How to Lend Money to Strangers.

You're the investment director for refugees and displaced populations at Kiva. It's an organisation that I first became aware of in about 2007, during a very early MBA project, and an organisation I took some inspiration from, actually, in a social entrepreneurship project I did later in my course, that won me a trip to San Francisco, so an organisation that's quite close to my heart.

But before we get more into the specifics of what Kiva is doing, you have a quite remarkable background in the lead up to where you are today. So let's start there.

Lev Plaves 2:50

Yeah, thanks so much, Brendan, it's wonderful to be here. And thanks for those kind words about Kiva.

I grew up in the Bay Area, where I'm coming to you from today, grew up in Berkeley, California, and I think played around with a lot of different things through my earlier years on what I might be interested in. But one of the things that was a constant throughout my youth - and then kind of through university - was an interest, specifically, in the Middle East. It was a region that fascinated me.

I constantly wanted to learn more about what was happening there, whether it was watching movies, reading books, going to lectures, and so on. So I had this interest that initially led me to start studying Arabic in university and I charted my own path after that.

I ended up studying abroad, while I was in university, in Ramallah, in Palestine, and continued studying Arabic there and started to just really grow in my desire to spend an extended amount of time in the region. I then went on to teach English courses and so spent an initial six months in that first stint in Ramallah. I came back to the US finished my university and immediately then went back, and I got a job working for an NGO that was a youth empowerment organisation working with Palestinian youth - kind of everywhere from ages 10 or so through through 25, even up to 30.

We were building educational centres and running programmes at these youth centres, everything from English courses, computer classes, helping people with their CVs as they look for employment opportunities, drama programmes, and so on. That experience is actually where I first learned about Kiva myself. I got to see some people on the ground who had actually received loans from Kiva partners.

Brendan Le Grange 4:25

Which leads us nicely into the question of of that move. So you've moved to back home, I guess, but moved into Kiva. What was it within that organisation that you saw that made you want to make the move?

Lev Plaves 4:38

I think one of the things that I was really struck by from my time working with Palestinian youth, especially those who had recently graduated high school or even University was the incredible ideas that were coming out of these youth ideas for small businesses, entrepreneurial projects, and so on.

And one of the biggest blockers or limitations for so many of of the youth I came across was access to finance was actually access to the resources to turn these ideas into a reality.

I studied political science, I was really interested in the political aspect of things I hadn't thought a tonne on the economic aspect of it or economic development. But that initial two to three years in Palestine really led me to see the role economic development plays, and what being financially excluded means.

And that really is what got me interested in Kiva. And what led me to come to the organisation. And I spent a quick month training in San Francisco at our headquarters and then relocated to Istanbul, Turkey, where I was based for the first four years.

Brendan Le Grange 5:38

I suppose that's a good time for us to talk a little bit more about Kiva. As I said, it's a name I know, but I think many people will know the name, too, and have somewhat of an idea of what it's doing, because it was one of the very first viral successes in terms of FinTech/ economic/ social entrepreneurship - but for those who maybe aren't familiar, or who are interested in what it's evolved to since those early days, what is Kiva? What does it do? And how's it grown as an organisation from where it was when it started to where it is today?

Lev Plaves 6:10

Yeah, so Kiva was founded in 2005. So just a few years before, before you yourself learned about Kiva. We are a global nonprofit with a mission to expand financial access to help underserved communities thrive. We specifically do that through a crowdfunding platform, which I think, as you said, many listeners might be familiar with.

And for those who aren't, it's a platform where anyone can visit our website and lend as little as $25 to an entrepreneur in one of the close to 80 countries where we operate.

The way I think of it, right, is that our platform is a way for anyone with a credit card to tangibly be part of the solution, to make a difference, a real difference in someone's life. And again, this is a loan not a donation, so 96% of our loans are repaid.

Our repayment rate, over the 17 years or so, has been right around 96%. So this is a sustainable model, really, that allows individuals to put in money, and for that money to go pretty far. You fund a loan, you get repaid, you fund another loan, and so on - that power recycling is really critical to what we do.

Kiva is now 17 years old. And we've certainly grown and evolved over the years, I think our capacity to scale, our impact has really increased and we've become more innovative in terms of the types of partners we bring on, the types of borrowers we serve, and also the lenders that come onto our platform. Early on, in 2005, those first few years of Kiva, we were really focused on traditional microfinance and proving that this model of crowd funding for micro loans could work in a sustainable - and we've been able to prove out that the model works.

And so we really now evolved and gone beyond some of what more the traditional microfinance sectors have been focusing on to areas such as education lending, lending in the clean energy sector, lending for water and sanitation, and so on.

We've also launched two different direct lending programmes. One of the things that is key to our model is that we work through a network of local organisations. For the most part, these are local financial intermediaries that we've partnered with on the ground in the 80 or so countries where we've worked. The funding for these loans comes from our crowdfunding platform, right, from individuals putting in $25 at a time, but it is really these organisations on the ground that we rely on to work with the end users, to find the borrowers, and to provide the loans on the ground.

And that's critical to what we do. But one of the other things to note in terms of Kiva's growth, in terms of our evolution, is we do now have a direct lending programme here in the US, we provide loans directly from Kiva to the end user. And also internationally, on the global front. We have a social enterprise programme where we provide larger working capital loans to social enterprises directly this kind of growth. And I think expansion of what we can do allowed us to be pretty innovative when the pandemic hit with COVID in terms of providing larger loans to institutions, including our existing local lending partners who needed additional support to weather the storm during COVID.

And we've also seen this lead to the launch of Kiva Capital, which is an impact first private investments/ asset manager that we've launched as a subsidiary of Kiva.org

Brendan Le Grange 8:58

Yeah, it isn't impressive growth.

And I think just as the key thread, if I think of Kiva, is that direct relationship. That was something I looked at myself, too. There's a lot of data around how borrowers and lenders/ donors benefit when there's a direct relationship, when we can see the human side. But also really touching on some interesting themes that have been brought up in other episodes of this show. I was thinking there of COVID. When I spoke to Jayshree Venkateshan from Centre for Financial Inclusion, she also reminded me how, you know, a lot of these on the ground lenders are the only routes to banking to credit to financial services that communities have. And so it's not, as in the West, we might not want to interact with a big old boring bank, whose customer service might be maybe not up to scratch, these are often the only people there so to be able to support them through COVID through lockdowns, a lifeline to a lot of people.

Yeah, I agree. And I think one of the things that brought me to Kiva in the first place was the fact that critical and crucial to our model is working through these local intermediaries. I'm sitting here in the Bay Area, but it's really the organisations on the ground in Uganda, Kenya, Lebanon, Jordan, Colombia, and so on. These are the organisations who know the needs and how to best serve the individuals on the ground.

Lev Plaves 10:18

And so, you know, working through these local field partners, as we call them, I think it's one of the things that has led us to reach the scale and success of over $1.5 billion in loans today.

Brendan Le Grange 10:27

Let's talk a bit about your role in that growth, in that expansion. As I said upfront, you are the investment director at Kiva for refugees and displaced populations. It's a niche that off the top of my head, I wouldn't have first associated with Kiva, though, obviously, it very quickly makes sense.

Lev Plaves 10:44

Yeah. So I think, as I talked about, kind of how Kiva has grown and evolved over the years, specifically about what populations we can and should be serving and how we can make sure that our funding is having the most impact in terms of reaching the hardest to reach and those who are most in need.

So, high level right, my role today focuses on how we as Kiva and our work through our partners, how we can expand financial access specifically to refugees and displaced populations. Today, the UN estimates that there are around 90 million people who have been forcibly displaced from their homes. For these people, humanitarian assistance often plays a critical role. But the reality is that most refugees remain displaced for long periods of time, they either will not return home anytime soon, or may never return home at all. So we do need to look beyond just humaitarian assistance, and focus on bringing in longer term and more sustainable solutions to complement much of the aid that often is directed at the refugee crisis.

And so as I mentioned, I spent my first four or so years with Kiva based in Istanbul. This was in 2012, when Turkey had begun to host a large number of Syrian refugees. And I saw that many refugees, especially those ones that had spent maybe a year or two or even three years in their new country, were looking for ways to rebuild their lives, whether it was starting or growing a small business, to be used to generate an income for their families. And so I think when it comes to Kiva, that was a clear sign for me of the role we could play in being one small part of the solution for the global refugee crisis.

And so it's really focused on how we can work with our local partner organisations, the field partners we work with, specifically to expand their services and to bring the funding provided by Kiva lenders around the world to reach refugee populations who are looking to rebuild their lives.

Brendan Le Grange 12:28

You mentioned a few points there, and I might just be showing my ignorance of it, but you talked about refugees earning income supporting their families. You know, when I think as an outsider to this completely, the view we get of refugees filtered by the news is very skewed, and I don't actually have any idea of what the normal day to day experience is of a refugee.

And obviously, it's not going to be one single experience, but what are the experiences of refugees like on the ground, the ones that you're working with?

Lev Plaves 13:01

Yeah, I think what you said there about it, right, not being a single experiences is critical. And one of the things that I've learned since we officially launched this work at Kiva in 2016, is that the refugee population is very much not a monolith, right.

In fact, it's a very diverse group. It's 90 million people who broadly are all tied together by the fact that they've been forcibly displaced from their homes, whether to another country - and thus have become refugees - or within their existing country - and are those internally displaced. So if we're looking at this population of 90 million people, similar to any other kind of group or population of the size, the needs are going to be diverse and differ from different people and from different communities.

Refugees come from different socio economic backgrounds. They are or were doctors, lawyers, restaurant workers, employees, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, and so on. And so we often see in the media this image of refugees in a refugee camp, living out of a tent - for many refugees, that's not the reality, right? They've settled in a city or a town or a village. They're not in a camp where they're receiving direct humanitarian assistance, they're looking for opportunities to start small home-based businesses, retail out of home, selling food products, sewing businesses, and so on. Many are looking to start small shops or kiosks even refugees in camps, right.

Some of the camps we know today are some of the larger economies in their own countries. The Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya, itself has its own economy. And so you know, even living camps, refugees are very much looking for ways to see their entrepreneurial spirit come to fruition. So it's a diverse group, there are humanitarian needs for many, and I don't want to say that loans are appropriate for every refugee. That's very much not the case.

You know, refugees are not a homogenous population, but they do face some similar challenges. And some of those challenges for refugees specifically in the work that we're doing as Kiva is the fact that they have a difficult time rebuilding their lives and their new country because of limitations in terms of types of jobs. They can hold limitations in terms of accessing financials. services and so on in different regulatory realities and make it very difficult for refugees to look to be in a position to actually rebuild their lives provide for their families.

Brendan Le Grange 15:09

And I guess it's those difficulties mean that we need a special approach to lending to refugees. So what is the thinking behind that? Why a business focused on lending to refugees? What is the reason for needing a unique model?

Lev Plaves 15:23

Yeah. So you know, I mentioned how my time in Turkey and also throughout the region really helped me understand not only how diverse the refugee population is, and their needs are, but again, I was really struck over and over again, by the entrepreneurial spirit I saw among refugees, whether it's in Turkey, or in Jordan, and Lebanon, and so on.

One of the things I quickly realised are that refugees are very much financially excluded for the most part, right, I saw firsthand that very few banks or even microfinance institutions, even some of the most socially minded microfinance institutions, few are willing to serve refugees. The reason I saw over and over again, for this there, obviously, there are different factors. But the main cause of this, I think, is a perception of flight risk.

This idea that refugees pose a risk because they might flee to another country, they might flee to another part of the country. And that's could not be properly underwritten bank or microfinance institution could not go about actually providing a loan or servicing this population.

Some of the other challenges we've seen are the fact that refugees often have, you know, a lack of credit history in the new country, they might have had a credit history in their home country that's lost once they cross borders, they have limited fixed assets, often in the country where they've settled.

So this reality has kept refugees as being one of the most financially excluded populations globally today. And that's why we, as Kiva believed that we needed a dedicated programme ourselves to overcome these challenges and use the unique nature of our crowdfunding platform specifically to catalyse lending to refugee populations.

Brendan Le Grange 16:31

I guess the need has been fairly obvious for a long time, but most lenders would have stepped back and thought, well, as you said, it's there's some perceived risks in there. And I doubt that it's a big enough business to meet any banks interested in solving those. But Kiva had a lot of unique skills.

And I don't want to put too many words in your mouth, but when I hear your 96%, repayment rates on loans that nobody really needs to pay back, in many ways, they're quite charitable in nature, and yet you're getting 96% repayment rate. And I think that underlines the true risk is way lower than maybe we fear, sitting in a big marble bank somewhere thinking everybody's out to get us.

Actually, if you know how to identify the right populations and work with them, the human side comes through and the risk is inherently far lower than we fear. But yes, let me not put too many words in your mouth. Kiva is obviously quite well placed to fill some of these gaps, so how did you go about doing that? How did you get up the courage to lend to these populations and make a product targeted for them?

Lev Plaves 17:56

Yeah, you're certainly spot on. And right, what you said about kind of the difference of perceived risk versus actual risk.

The crowdfunding nature of our model makes our funding quite unique. And it differentiates it in terms of any other sources of funding when it reaches our local partners - you or I might go in and put $25 into the Kiva platform that goes through our local partners to the end borrower and the ground, what is unique about it is that you as the lender, putting in your $25, you are taking on the risk of that, if the business fails, and that borrower doesn't repay their loan, you as the social investor take on that risk, rather than the local financial intermediary. It makes our funding uniquely risk tolerant.

And so we've been able to work with our partners to be able to push the boundaries for the sake of impact, whether it's offering new products that might be perceived as too risky, enter new parts of the country that are more challenging to reach or serve populations, again, that are perceived as too risky to serve. And that's specifically what we've done in the refugee space. In 2016, we began going to our partners initially in the Middle East, and since this has expanded into East Africa and Latin America as well saying, we understand that there's a need in your country among the refugee population to start accessing financial services.

And we understand that from a social perspective, from an impact perspective, you're very interested in doing so. But we also recognise the the perceived risks that you're faced with. And so let's work together. Let's use Kiva's, you know, risk tolerant, crowdfunded capital, and let's work together piloting refugee lending to learn and see if it's really as risky as it perceived to be. And so this works out in 2016. It started as a small scale with about a million dollars that first year and it's continued to grow every year since then, to the point today, now we're, you know, our community of lenders have funded over $25 million to refugees across the world.

Brendan Le Grange 19:39

I like that approach of sort of proving it out and then allowing others to follow essentially, you just show that work out what the real risk is be that first mover, and one of the results been of that sort of grand experiment.

Lev Plaves 19:52

The results very much had been what we hoped they would be in that the risk of lending to refugees is much more perceived risk than a real risk. Over $25 million lent, we've seen that refugees are repaying their loans right around 95% or so, pretty much at the same rate as non refugees on Kiva. And in some countries, we actually see that refugees are repaying their loans at higher rates than non refugees.

For us, this has been a huge learning. Our primary goal has been - and continues to be - to get this much needed capital to reach refugees who are looking to take on loans. But an equally important goal now is sharing these results with sharing with the broader community, what we found, which counters the perception that refugees are too risky to serve, that they're too risky to invest in.

And I think it not only demonstrates that, that refugees are viable to lend to but if you're a financial institution, in a country with a large refugee population, it makes sense to start serving this population from a business perspective.

And, you know, it's not just us as key without starting this, but many of our partners have as well, I remember talking to one of our local partners on the ground in Lebanon, and they were telling me how initially, their loan officers were incredibly reluctant in going out and looking for refugees in that community who might who might be looking for loans, because they were worried that it would come back to bite them and that the loans wouldn't be repaid. And fast forward a year or so.

And the loan officers came to management and said, refugees are now the first people they look to when when they're looking to find particular clients to lend to because of what their performance has been and how strong they've been as as clients in their loans.

So from from that perspective, the results and what we've learned, you know, couldn't have been better. And it is very much what we hope to see. And we hope that others in the development community, specifically focused on refugees will use these learnings to help expand this work, you know, beyond just what we've done as Kiva.

Brendan Le Grange 21:39

This might be an unfair question to drop in there... but I was wondering, do you think that this also might impact the view that local communities have of refugees? If we're able to empower refugees to be active participants in the economy to generate income to generate economic growth? Do you think that's something that can maybe bring down some of these barriers or these sort of lazy stereotypes?

Lev Plaves 22:01

I think this is an area that certainly, you know, still needs to be focused on moving forward, it very much differs, country, by country, we do very much see often, you know, social tension and animosity between refugees and the host communities in the cities or villages where they've settled, we've seen this idea that right refugees are a strain on local economies, they might compete for jobs, and so on. And so I do think what we're doing is helping illustrate the image of refugees as as entrepreneurs and refugees, as small business owners who actually can contribute to a local economy can bring, you know, skills, different cultural experiences, and so on to a community.

One of the things that that I've been most inspired when I've actually got to visit our work on the ground in Jordan and Lebanon, both some of the loans that we provide through our partners are group loans where the group is mixed, you know, half the group is a refugee individual, and the other half are Lebanese or Jordanian host nationals.

And so we're not only encouraging economic activity among the refugee population, but we're bringing these two populations together in a way that they probably wouldn't otherwise to take a loan together to embark on economic activity and an economic endeavour together, which is really helping further break down some of the barriers and improve some social cohesion between two groups that often are at least portrayed to be at odds with one another.

Brendan Le Grange 23:18

Yeah, it's a wonderful idea and allowing the two groups to showcase their trustworthiness directly to each other. Let's talk about loans versus donations. It's actually a topic that I discussed on a previous episode with Holger Westphely from the Charities Aid Foundation. But not everybody would have heard that. And I think it's a question maybe people are asking themselves now.

So let's address that: you've got a population of refugees, that's fairly vulnerable, they need extra financing, why are we looking to lend money to them, rather than to just donate them the money and call that a good deed?

Lev Plaves 23:52

Yeah, I think a lot of this goes back to some of the points we've touched on already, right, given the diverse refugee population, that that makes up the 90 million people who are forcibly displaced today, the needs are very diverse. And so for some humanitarian aid and humanitarian assistance is what makes the most sense, especially those who have been maybe displaced more recently, or more early on in kind of their journey of being a refugee, which, again, unfortunately, we know is, for the most part a protracted experience.

The refugees specifically who we're targeting and who we're working with and who our partners are working with tend to be those who have been displaced now at least for a few years who have been in in their new country for at least a few years. And they themselves are looking to move on from humanitarian aid and beyond needing to rely on whether it's cash handouts or other humanitarian assistance. I think, you know, one of the things that I hear over and over again, in one form or another is, you know, refugees who say I want to be seen not as a refugee, but as an entrepreneur. I want to be seen not as a refugee, but a small business owner.

Again, refugees is it describes what happened to them, but it is not who they are at their core. And so for many of these refugees who are who are in a position to folk guess on what their new life is going to look like in their new country. That's really where loans come in. This applies not just to our work with refugees, but our work more broadly at Kiva, you know, loans and microfinance is not appropriate for every single person in need, and everyone towards the bottom of the pyramid, and it is appropriate for the right people.

And so what's incredibly important in our refugee work and what our partners do part of again, why we rely on these local field partners on the ground is to segment the refugee population in each country to understand who are the refugees that we should be targeting with loans and credit opportunities, because those are the ones we want to be focusing on loans aren't for everyone, whether whether they're a refugee or not.

But we do believe that lending can and does play a critical role for many refugees.

And we've seen that now over the $25 million, we've lent.

Brendan Le Grange 25:43

I guess, for that 95% repayment rate, that allows me as a lender to change a $1,000 budget into a $20,000 budget for good. So a great way to multiply the impact of funds for versus people sitting in developed countries wanting to help and obviously, the impact on human lives, we're talking about chairs, huge, these are not just another credit card in someone's wallet.

These are life changing loans. In many situations, one of the core strengths of Kiva has always been telling these human stories.

Lev Plaves 26:16

Yeah, certainly, you know, getting to go to the field and actually see the the results of our work on the ground is one of the things that brought me to Kiva in the first place and keeps me here at Kiva 10 years later.

One of the most impactful or important parts of what I do on a day to day, it's certainly been limited, some during the pandemic, unfortunately, but you know, one of the refugees who constantly comes to my mind when I have the chance to meet was in Lebanon.

This was in a small village up in the hills outside of Beirut - an hour or so outside of Beirut - a woman named Samira who I had the chance to visit, she had taken a loan funded by Kiva lenders around the world through one of our field partners on the ground in Lebanon. She and her family fled Syria, I believe it was in 2014, they expected they'd be gone for a maximum of a few months, probably even less, and years later, obviously, they still remain in Lebanon.

And, you know, one of the things she was faced with was that the cost of living is significantly higher in Lebanon than in many parts of Syria, where refugees came from when this includes the cost of rent, right? They're not in a refugee camp. There aren't really proper refugee camps in Lebanon, for Syrian refugees. So they had to rent an apartment in this village cover education related expenses for children and so on. So Samira started a makeup and hair salon business out of her home for brides before they were getting married and other events in the community. And that helps them right, she started to earn some income and was able to kind of get her feet under her.

And this goes back to your previous question about bringing refugees and host communities together, she became friends with her Lebanese neighbour who suggested that they work together to grow Samira's business. And so they actually took a joint loan again, the two of them, to buy wedding dresses, which she now has grown her business not only to provide makeup and do hair styling, but she rents out these wedding dresses to brides in advance of their wedding day, mostly focusing on Syrian refugees, Syrian brides who can't afford actually the cost of a wedding dress themselves. So they rent it for a day, which allows them to move forward with the type of wedding that they envision.

So I just thought that idea was was really innovative and kind of amazing. And when I saw her again, this was a few years ago, she told me that from that loan, and from expanding her business and into including this this dress rental component, she doubled her income from from $300 to $600 per month, and has been able to move her family into a larger apartment to buy school supplies for her children on top of that build this relationship with her Lebanese neighbour, which I think is an amazing kind of illustration of how people are able to come together in a way that we don't often see in today's media.

Brendan Le Grange 28:43

It's always great to hear examples where people are given this route to a new life, not just some way to sort of sit in and wait out their time in a world where there's a lot of a lot of troubles in the world at the moment. But amongst them, we've got climate change, which is predicted to dramatically increase the number of refugees, as you know, some of the world's poorest areas are also most exposed to rising temperatures and falling crop yields, things like that. What can we do to scale up the sort of solutions in the future to deal with what could be a significantly growing challenge with handling refugees and working with refugees?

Lev Plaves 29:23

Yeah, you know, I think you really touched on it well, right. Unfortunately, the refugee crisis and refugee crises in specific different contexts are not going to go away and are most likely only going to expand. Some estimates, especially with climate change, and climate refugees, upwards of 300 million people being forcibly displaced by 2039.

So, I spend a lot of time thinking about what that means for the work that I'm doing for the work that Kiva is doing, in terms of what we've seen already. I touched a lot in our conversation thus far on our work in the Middle East, but our work has grown much further beyond that as well - to East Africa, we're doing a lot of work serving refugees both in and out of camps in Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya. And we've seen this work expand into South America as well, especially as the Venezuelan crisis continues to worsen and lead to displacement.

That's an area of focus for us, obviously, I think very much on people's minds today is the Ukrainian crisis that is still very new and fresh. And I think, given what I've said about where Kiva comes in, and where loans often come in for refugees, it's a little too early for us to know what our role will be in this crisis. But you know, one that we're watching closely, and I think Kiva obviously is one small drop in the bucket. In order to really make a difference on the forcibly displaced globally, we're going to need a really comprehensive broad coalition of organisations focusing on different areas, and we will continue to play our role.

One of the biggest areas that we focused on moving forward actually, is the launch of Kiva capital, which is our impact first private investment asset management subsidiary, specifically looking to kind of how we can grow and scale our work beyond the crowdfunding platform.

Again, most people think of Kiva and they know us as the crowdfunding platform, which is very much kind of at the core of what we do, and will continue to do. But this is a separate initiative where we're working to raise impact first, institutional funds. So working not with retail lenders putting $25 on a crowdfunding platform, we're working with larger institutional investors to raise funds to help us do the work that's been demonstrated on the kiva.org crowdfunding platform. And so one of the first funds we've launched is the Kiva refugee investment fund successfully closed a little over a year ago and at $32.5 million. And this is a five year fund now that is looking to identify where we've had success on keeping our org lending to refugees, or where we might be able to see our capital have impact for the first time in a new area.

And so we're using, you know, this fund, specifically to scale proven refugee lending programme, and kind of, you know, I think signifies our effort. And we're gonna continue to find ways to grow our work. But again, Kiva is just one piece and if others come in, and if other investors look to start investing in the refugee space, and if other financial institutions realise that that many refugees is viable, and we're going to still need the humanitarian efforts, we're still going to need the kind of policy and regulatory environment to change, it's really going to take this comprehensive effort to make a difference on on refugees moving forward.

Brendan Le Grange 32:11

Yeah, it's also where I love that data sharing approach. Because yeah, as you say, you can go in, you can be a scout, get in early and be the one who takes that first risk to test the waters and then make it available so that others can follow others can participate.

And if anyone listening wants to be one of those ones participating, either at the individual level, or even perhaps at an institutional level, where can they go to learn more about Kiva to learn more about your work with displaced populations or to participate?

Lev Plaves 32:42

You know, the first thing I would say, right, if you if you haven't yet, make a loan to a refugee on the platform, visit our website: www.kiva.org

There's a specific category dedicated there to refugees and find a loan that speaks to you. And that a loan of $25 to a refugee somewhere in the world. I think a lot of what we've talked about today also has been around the importance of changing the narrative of who refugees are.

And so I think whether you, as a listener have a personal story, or have kind of picked up some of that through our conversation today, helping changing the narrative and helping kind of going out and saying, Hey, maybe refugees aren't just burdens on on their new economy or new community, but what are they providing? What are they bringing back that adds value? And I think, right, you know, at the end of the day, Kiva is one of the many ways to support we address one specific area, one specific need for refugees.

But there are many other organisations from UN agencies from the International Rescue Committee, IRC who are doing incredibly important work to support refugees. And so I definitely, you know, I always encourage folks to kind of cast a wide net when it comes to you know, how we can support refugees today, if people have specific questions on how to get involved, feel free to contact me, email refugees@kiva.org, or email me directly. And I'd be more than happy to continue the conversation as well.

Brendan Le Grange 33:52

Great Lev, thank you so much for your time, I was just going to add one more thing. If anybody's listening and has an organisational budget at their disposal. When I was researching the space, what I found was that consumers or customers love to see the organisations that they are transacting with on a day to day basis giving money to causes they believe in.

So if your customers are on Kiva making loans to these refugee groups, and you're they're making big scale investments in the same areas, you're likely to be building some really good goodwill live. Thank you so much for your time. This is one of the interviews I'm most excited to have got onto the schedule. So it's been an absolute pleasure chatting to you. I'm going to head over to Kiva as well and make some loans to refugees myself. I encourage everyone listening to do so as well. Yeah, lots for us to take away from today.

Lev Plaves 34:45

Thanks so much, Brandan. Really wonderful to get to discuss this with you and thanks for giving me the opportunity to share more about our work.

Brendan Le Grange 34:52

If you enjoyed that, please do rate and review on your preferred podcast platform and share widely including on LinkedIn and while you are there, send me a connection request.

The show is written and recorded by myself Brendan Le Grange in Brighton, England and edited with assistance by Kane Hunter. Show music is by Iam_wake and you can find full written transcripts now in several languages, show notes and more content at www.HowtoLendMoneytoStrangers.show and I'll see you again next Thursday.