Kiva conducts regular, ongoing monitoring of all Lending Partners, but only posts status updates here in response to relevant, major changes at the partner.

Status update — September 3, 2015

After 14 months on Kiva and $200K in loans fundraised, Ejido Verde Reserves has graduated out of Kiva’s Experimental Partnership program and been given a risk rating of 0.5 stars. 

Partner description: 

Ejido Verde Reserves (EVR) is a nonprofit organization that is run by leaders of the Mexican pine-chemicals industry in partnership with Indigenous communities. It operates in the states of Michoacan, Jalisco and Mexico. 

The organization is working to establish productive native resin pine plantations on Indigenous lands with the goal of improving Indigenous livelihoods, reforesting idle lands and increasing domestic production of pine resin.  

Pine resin, a millennial industry, is used in the manufacture of adhesives, inks, chewing gum, pine oil, surface coatings, insulating materials and synthetic rubber. 

Learn more about Ejido Verde Reserves in this video»

A unique lending approach:

Recipients of Kiva and EVR loans are currently earning income from tapping their native forests, which have tree densities—on average—of around 50 trees/hectare. 

With support from EVR and Kiva, these communities would be able to cultivate plantations of 800 trees/hectare, drastically increasing the number of trees from which to sustainably extract resin, decreasing travel time between trees in order to tap, and increasing incomes by over 500% over the course of 1-2 decades. 

Kiva loans of 0% interest will be used to establish pine plantations in communities that are already working with EVR, and EVR will not charge any interest either on this capital. Each loan will be for 15 years, with repayments equal to 10% of resin sales due back to Kiva lenders annually at the time of each sale. With Kiva’s support, EVR will be able to improve the livelihoods of many Indigenous communities.