Funded

Total loan: $975

Nasiraka Group

Chwele, Kenya / Farming

A loan helped a member to purchase hybrid seed and fertilizer for the cultivation of millet and sorghum.

Nasiraka Group's story

Stephen’s group has 25 farmers and is located in Chwele District. Stephen is pictured on the right of Nasira Group with his hand raised. Stephen is pictured amongst the 8 men and 17 women of his group. He will receive input loans capable of planting ½ an acre with sorghum and millet. Stephen joined One Acre Fund during the Long Rains 2011, and is now enrolling in the Long Rains 2013 season. Stephen joined One Acre Fund so that he could grow enough food for the family and gain access to hybrid seed and fertilizer.

Prior to joining One Acre Fund, Stephen was only able to harvest 2 bags of maize per ½ acre, but, after joining One Acre Fund, he was able to harvest 13 bags per ½ acre! He plans on using future profits from the harvest to send his children to school and save for the future. For the 2013 Long Rains season, Stephen’s group members will take input loans of ½ acre each. In total, this group will receive input loans for use on 12.5 acres of land.

In this group: Stephen, Frida, Hillary, Jane, Johnface, Alice, Alice, Florence, Judith, Phoebe, Zuzy, Mildred, Peter, Alice, Lona, Peter, Ruth, Scolastic, Fatuma, Maurice, Robert, Janet, Pasilisa, Wycliffe, Annah

More about this loan

This loan is part of One Acre Fund's integrated agricultural package, which provides groups of smallholder farmers with seeds and fertilizers on credit, onsite agricultural training, and insurance options. Borrowers also have the option to purchase solar lanterns as part of the loan package.

To give borrowers more flexibility, One Acre Fund permits them to switch groups, drop out of the program and change their loan amounts before receiving their inputs. To accommodate this, Kiva allows One Acre Fund to post loans for groups that may change in size and membership. Only the group leader is featured in the photo, representing the loans for each of his or her individual group members.

If a lender makes a loan to group containing a borrower that drops out, the lender will receive the full loan amount for that borrower back at the end of the harvest season. If the lender makes a loan to a group containing a borrower that decides to take a smaller loan amount after the loan is funded, the lender will receive the repayments from the smaller loan amount plus the full difference between the two loan amounts at the end of the harvest season.

This Kiva loan will be used to provide borrowers with needed goods or services, as opposed to cash or financial credit.

About One Acre Fund:

With this loan, One Acre Fund will purchase fertilizer, seeds, and other important farming inputs to distribute to this farmer group during Kenya's next planting season in February. This distribution of farming inputs is part of One Acre Fund's integrated agriculture package, which includes training, reliable input supply (such as fertilizer and seeds), credit and insurance. Clients enroll between July and October for the following planting season, which begins in February. By purchasing inputs during these months, One Acre Fund is able to take advantage of the historically low farm input prices during this time of year in Kenya.

Members of One Acre Fund form groups in which each borrower guarantees the loans of all other borrowers in the group. One Acre Fund differs from a traditional microfinance institution, however, by allowing groups to split before the delivery of inputs at planting time. If a group were to split, each of the two new groups would have fewer members that could support a delinquency or default from a member. This may represent a different risk than that for a traditional MFI?s group loan.