“Ability is of little account without opportunity.” -Lucille Ball This week marked Lucille Ball’s birthday. Were she still alive, she would now be 100. I can still vividly remember watching re-runs of ‘I Love Lucy’ with my grandparents growing up, and I can’t help but laugh every time I think [...]
In anything, there are good days and bad. Reading about current world events like famine, shootings and plane crashes can get depressing quickly – and that’s just this week’s news cycle. However, those lows can make the good-news highs that much better. And it turns out today might just be [...]
For the past two weeks, I have been criss-crossing the Philippines with Sanjaya Punyasena, one of Vittana’s International Partnerships Managers, and Roger Johnson, our Chief Financial Advisor. We have spent 2-3 days with each of our three Filipino partners, meeting staff and students at each step along the way. Why [...]
Okay, so it’s not Tuesday any more. But it was two days ago. And two days ago turned out to be pretty exciting. We arrived at work on Tuesday to find that President Obama was visiting our building that morning. There were squad cars everywhere, the roads were blocked off, [...]
Have you looked closely at the bios of any of our students lately? They have amazingly compelling stories. Often, it is our Fellows who meet them in person and tell their stories (like here, here and here), but as we are currently in a brief lull between Fellows, I am [...]
As Vittana grows, we thought it might be beneficial to explore some of the early foundations of microfinance. While student loans go a step beyond the traditional concept to focus on students rather than business ventures, we are definitely rooted in its core principles. So let’s take a quick look [...]
Graduation is right around the corner – have you bought your niece a graduation gift yet? Or do you have a family member with a birthday coming up? In case you didn’t see our post about Mother’s Day, two weeks ago we ran a last-minute campaign to send your mom [...]
This month, we’re celebrating our first full year of student lending. To tell you the truth, we’ve been around a bit longer but our first loans came online in May 2009 so we’re calling the date here. Most importantly, it has been an incredible year. Our lenders are currently funding [...]
I was browsing through our website today, looking for inspiration, when I came across this on our communities page: I see this graphic fairly frequently, but I have to admit I haven’t actually taken the time to look closely at it for a while. It’s one of those things that [...]
We are honored to be a nominee for “Best Non-Profit Startup” in the Seattle 2.0 Awards this year! We’re amongst some amazing company with fellow Seattle startups up for various awards. Voters will determine all award winners – and we’d love your support. You can vote for Vittana as Seattle [...]
