Well, I’m here

By Adam Preston, KF9, Philippines

I finally touched down in Manila at 2:30 AM last Saturday morning. After getting my bags from baggage claim I wandered through the sliding glass doors and into the heat. Where is my driver? Where is an ATM? Why is that little kid laughing at me? My work as a Kiva Fellow had officially begun.

My name is Adam Preston and for the next 10 weeks I will be working with Alalay sa Kaunlaran, Inc (ASKI), a prized Kiva field partner located in Cabantuan City, Philippines. As a Kiva Fellow, I hope to pitch in and help ASKI better serve their clients and also to be the eyes and ears on the ground for Kiva and its lenders.

I come to Kiva with 10 years of management consulting experience. As a Kiva Fellow, I look forward to using this experience to work with ASKI on how to most efficiently use Kiva as a funder, to work with Kiva to address some of the technical and operational challenges being faced in the field, and finally to work with you, the lending community, to share the borrower stories.

As a side note, its only been 4 days here in Cabanatuan but I have already managed to find time to get my “geek” on and started an open source project called Kiva Dashboard. Hopefully one day this will provide ASKI as well as all Kiva field partners with all sorts of valuable information in using the Kiva platform. If you are interested in helping, let me know.

So, there you have it. There is definitely more to come here from Cabanatuan City. You can be sure of that.

Adam Preston is a Kiva Fellow at Alalay sa Kaunlaran, Inc (ASKI), Philippines. Basically, he is just a regular guy who is currently taking a break from the daily grind in Corporate America to find out how people are getting along in the Philippines. Click here to support fundraising borrowers at ASKI!

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