Funded

Total loan: $1,500

Christine Inyangara's Group

Vihiga, Kenya / Health

Find a new loan

A loan helped a member to provide communities with free access to chlorine to treat their drinking water.

Christine Inyangara's Group's story

In Kitulu/Burudi village in Vihiga County, Kenya, Christine has volunteered to be the promoter for a new chlorine dispenser program. Christine is friendly, hardworking, reliable and a well-known member of the community with 5 children. Christine lives with her family in a house made of mud walls, dirt floor and iron roof.

Kitulu/Burudi village does not have a piped water supply so the community collects their water from a protected spring. This water is easily contaminated with bacteria that can cause water-borne diseases. Chlorine dispensers offer a solution to this problem by allowing people to treat their water at the point of collection to make it safe to drink. Christine’s family and 67 other households using the local water sources need a loan to cover the costs of installing and maintaining chlorine dispensers at the water sources in the area.

Christine has volunteered to be the promoter to encourage the community to use the dispenser and to refill the dispenser with chlorine when the tank runs low. Christine volunteered to be the promoter because she is trustworthy and always available to serve her community. Christine believes that chlorine dispenser use will kill germs and prevent water-borne diseases. There are four other volunteer promoters from the surrounding communities who are part of this group loan: Elizabeth, Nancy, Christine and Harun.

The Kiva loan will be repaid by Evidence Action (www.evidenceaction.org) on behalf of the community through the sale of carbon credits. Using chlorine dispenser generates carbon credits by avoiding the need to boil water to make it safe to drink. Revenues from the sale of carbon credits to organizations and individuals wanting to reduce world carbon footprint will be used to repay Kiva lenders and to make sure that Christine’s community can have access to safe water now and in the future.

In this group: Christine, Elizabeth, Nancy, Christine, Harun

More about this loan

About Evidence Action:

This loan is part of Evidence Action?s Dispensers for Safe Water program, providing rural communities with access to safe drinking water by installing chlorine dispensers where people collect water. The dispensers enable community members to treat their water with chlorine to make it safe to drink.

Kiva loans are used to finance the installation, maintenance and refilling of chlorine dispensers. Evidence Action provides dispensers as in-kind loans to communities, represented on Kiva by dispenser ?promoters,? who will help educate their neighbors about the equipment?s use and benefits, and refill the dispenser with chlorine.

Instead of these loans being repaid by community members, Kiva lenders are reimbursed by the sale of carbon credits. These carbon credits are generated when households use chlorine dispensers to treat their water, because they no longer have to boil it over wood-burning fires that release harmful greenhouse gases. This change in behavior is monetized through the sale of carbon credits on the voluntary carbon market.

Here?s how it works:

1) Kiva borrowers grant the rights to carbon credits they generate to Evidence Action. 2) Evidence Action works with an organization called Impact Carbon to monitor, quantify and verify carbon credits, which can then be sold to individuals and organizations looking to reduce their carbon footprint. 3) Revenue earned from this sale is used to maintain dispensers and repay Kiva lenders.

This is the first time Kiva is financing loans that are repaid with carbon credit revenues. By supporting this loan, you?re joining an exciting experiment in using credit to fund carbon-reducing water projects. This also means that these loans may carry a significantly higher level of risk than typical Kiva loans.

To learn more about this model, read our blog post "A new way of thinking: Carbon as currency."

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