Status update — July 19, 2016

Since the last update, Abaarso has collected all payments that its borrowers were able to make, and those have been sent to Kiva and disbursed to contributing lenders. Due to financial difficulties, some borrowers were unable to able to pay back the full loan amounts and those loans have been defaulted on Kiva. Given that all loans have now been paid back or defaulted, and that no new loans have been originated in several years, Kiva and Abaarso will be officially closing their partnership. Kiva once again thanks Abaarso for its partnership and their work on providing improved education in Somaliland.

Status update — June 24, 2014
The Abaarso partnership is now moved to inactive status. Abaarso will not be posting any new loans to the Kiva website, but Kiva expects that Abaarso will continue to monitor its borrowers and facilitate repayments to lenders. Over the course of the 2-year partnership, Abaarso raised nearly $27,000 in loans and helped 40 borrowers attend school. We thank Abaarso for their collaboration and wish them all the best in their work.
 

Partner description:

The Abaarso School of Science and Technology is a nonprofit educational institute launched in 2008 to provide primary, secondary, tertiary and graduate-level students with high-quality education in the Somaliland region of Somalia. Located in the village of Abaarso, the school is built on donated land and has traditionally been funded by its founder and individual grants.

The heart of the operation is the secondary school, a four-year boarding school that admits the brightest students in the country regardless of their ability to pay. Offering comprehensive courses in the sciences and humanities, the Abaarso School emphasizes interactive, hands-on learning techniques designed to propel its graduates to top-ranked universities worldwide.

Despite the Abaarso School’s need-blind admission policy, the secondary school aims to be sustainable. The goal is to cross-subsidize tuition for poorer students with three revenue-generating initiatives: a primary-level tutoring program, an undergraduate finance degree program, and an MBA program. While this effort has been somewhat successful, the Abaarso School still struggles to provide scholarships to all the students who need them. 

That’s where Kiva comes in. Our partnership with the Abaarso School gives lenders the opportunity to provide partial tuition loans to brilliant high school students who could not afford to attend otherwise. By offering longer-term loans, with repayment periods up to five years, Kiva helps the Abaarso School become more sustainable and serve a greater number of bright, low-income students. 

Before partnering with Kiva, the Abaarso School subsidized full and partial tuitions for nearly 84% of its student body, and there were no loans available. This model was not operationally sustainable and too reliant on donor funding. Kiva has enabled the Abaarso School to establish its first ever loan program, and to give students and their families a choice of the best loans to fit their financial situations.

For extra security, an 8% fee is charged upfront on loans and added to the amount of principal listed on Kiva. The full amount is repaid to lenders in accordance with the repayment schedule provided for each student. This small fee goes into the secondary school’s Shared Responsibility Fund, used to assist struggling borrowers with monthly repayments. 

All loan contracts are executed by both student and their parent or guardians -- and when possible, the student’s clan elder.