Crowd Funding for Albania Social Business
Yunus Social Business (YSB) has teamed up with Kiva.org, a non-profit crowd-funding platform, to raise 18,000 euro in zero-interest loans for Rozafa, a social business of marketing in Albania. The investment will, over a period of 6 years, finance development and implementation of a successful marketing strategy for Rozafa, that will help it to bring women’s beautifully crafted Albanian handicrafts to the European market. YSB successfully raised $23,950 for Rozafa from 16th to 17th August, 2013 from a total of 788 lenders.
Partnership with Kiva
Yunus Social Business (YSB), an incubator fund co-founded by Prof. Yunus to create and empower social businesses outside Bangladesh, formally became a partner of Kiva in October 2012. This happened after Premal Shah, founder of Kiva, met Nobel Laureate Professor Yunus at Clinton Global Initiative in New York. Kiva came into global fame by connecting small amounts of individual money to microcredit borrowers around the world as loans.
About Rozafa
Rozafa was founded to empower rural women and to revitalize the traditional Albanian handicrafts. It provides training, equipment, sales and distribution services to create marketing wing of Rozafa as a separate business, YSB helped Rozafa to incorporate a new Rozafa social business. This is financed by the Kiva loan.
Rozafa, the social business, had a funding requirement of Euro 18,000 to implement a sales and marketing strategy which would help it to find steady flow of clients for the handicraft products of its 120 female artisans. They went through several workshops to build their capacity to make an income from their skills despite living in a small city outside the track of global trade and commerce.
Posting the Loan on Kiva
As a partner, YSB has access to the online system to post their formality requirements onto Kiva.
Rozafa’s repayment will begin from September 2016. It will transfer the repayments to Kiva via YSB every month until the nominal principal amount of the loan is fully repaid. Kiva does not charge any interest or fees.
Marketing of Kiva Loan
The success of the Kiva loan propels it to expand in an unlimited way. The loan was marketed via YSB's website and social media platforms as well s through Yunus Centre's social media platforms. Yunus Centre’s social media will continue to publicize and mobilize these loans.
