There are some great students at my school doing some really cool things that are improving our school and the world. Today, a group of students is trying to get micro-lending to be ingrained in the culture of ISP. They approached the Student Council about funding each advisory (homeroom) with 25 dollars as seed money for lending on Kiva.org. Advisories could just use the 25 dollars, or they could contribute from their own pockets and do even more good. Each advisory then searched through Kiva to choose the beneficiary that they most wanted to assist, and loaned them the money. When the beneficiary pays back the loan, the group of student will repeat the process and choose another beneficiary. After 4 years, when the students in an advisory graduate, they will pass the account onto a freshman advisory to continue the legacy, and to continue to fund loans for individuals or groups that otherwise don't have access to money to improve their lives.
There were some interesting discussions, "aha moments", and plenty of learning as advisories went about choosing beneficiaries. The thing that I took away from this is how exciting it is to be a part of an organization where students are encouraged to lead, and make a global impact.
If you'd like to know more about micro-lending, check out http://www.kiva.org/
If you'd like to see how these innovative and mildly thespian students went about introducing this program to our school, watch the video below.
This is what learning should be about, authentic connections develop with a student centered approach and with a long term view, nice one
ReplyDeleteAs the teacher helping these student set the program up I would like to add how easy it was. The senior students themselves were enthusiastic about the project and prepared the lesson for the advisory (homeroom/formroom) teachers. The school administration have been very supportive with the financial setup required in transferring the money to the main school Kiva account (or parent account). From there the student committee 'gifted' the USD25 per advisory. Very simple but what a learning experience. All day I have fielded questions and comments from students who want to know more about microcredit and about what else they can do. The next step is to make this a sustainable program embedded into the life of the school. From the response today I am confident it will be.
ReplyDeleteAs one of the students who participated in the project, I would like to add that it was a lot of fun to prepare. We've heard comments from a wide variety of students about how they enjoyed the X-block and would like to get more involved. There was even an advisory that couldn't decide between two candidates to be the Microfinance representative, because both were so passionate. They ended up electing two. We never expected that the students would be so intrigued, and I think that it's in large part thanks to the interface of Kiva. It makes it not only interesting, but fun to browse and read stories. We hope that by the end of the year each advisory will have many loans going and they will be checking the progress of their borrowers regularly.
ReplyDeleteAwesome idea on so many levels! My wheels are spinning on ways to bring this to a 3rd grade level - thanks for sharing!
ReplyDelete@Keith - Perhaps you would want a few of our students to Skype in and speak with our students. Let me know and I could coordinate with some of the student leaders.
ReplyDelete@Adam - wadayathink?
That would be fantastic! I think there definitely are many applications for elementary school. Microfinance is a very simple concept and Kiva is a very straightforward and easy-to-use resource. We'd love to help out if we can.
ReplyDeleteSounds great! Let's shoot for mid to late January. That'll give everyone a chance to recover from break and get back in the swing of things.
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