Nick Cain

Fellows of the Month: Patrick Huang and Luke Monroe

by Nick Cain
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For the past four months, Vittana Fellows Patrick Huang and Luke Monroe have been hard at work in Kigali, Rwanda. Patrick came to Vittana from a career as a management consultant at IBM. Luke is an entrepreneur at heart. He started a business while getting his bachelors degree at USC.

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One Hand Is Not Enough to Clap

by Nick Cain
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Last month South Sudan celebrated its independence. After a 22-year civil war, it became the world’s newest country (and supplanted Eritrea as Africa’s youngest nation). Independence Day happened to coincide with my visit to Rwanda, a neighboring-but-not-bordering East African nation that is home to Urwego Opportunity Bank, one of Vittana’s

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John Foster – Fellow of the Month

by Nick Cain

Vittana needs lots of things to keep it running: hard work, innovative ideas, money to keep the lights on, etc. But when it comes down to it, stories are what make us tick. Stories of students’ lives being changed by education keep us working hard here in Seattle. And more

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Changing lives in Western Visayas

by Nick Cain

Today is a big day here at Vittana: we are thrilled to welcome Negros Women for Tomorrow Foundation (NWTF) as our eighth student lending partner and our first partner in the Philippines!  NWTF, headquartered in Bacolod City on the western side of Negros Island, serves over 80,000 low-income entrepreneurs, 99%

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¡Bienvenidos a Honduras!

by Nick Cain

Vittana community, meet Fundación CREHO, the newest microfinance institution to join Vittana’s network of innovative student lenders. It’s always an exciting day here at the office when we welcome students from a new country to the Vittana family, and we’re particularly excited to partner with Fundación CREHO.  Driven by the

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Celebrating Moms Who Go to School

by Nick Cain

In a recent entry here on the blog, Vittana Fellow Nayna Gupta told the story of Mercy Marilu, a young woman from Lima, Peru.  Mercy, who works as a primary school teacher, received a Vittana loan to help her finish a degree in early childhood education.  Mercy’s story was inspiring—after

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Ahead of the curve in Mongolia

by Nick Cain

Ulaanbaatar is cold.  Home to XacBank, an early Vittana partner and MIX Global top 100 microfinance institution (MFI), Mongolia’s capital city topped out at 10 below zero during my visit two weeks ago.  As I walked from my hotel to the XacBank office for the first time, my breath short

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Vittana in Vietnam

by Nick Cain

Vittana partner Binh Minh is a small microfinance institution based in Hanoi, Vietnam, primarily serving rural clients in the provinces surrounding the city.  Binh Minh began working with Vittana to develop a student loan product in the fall of last year, and by December, Vittana’s first Vietnamese student, Linh Thi

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Bringing Student Loans to Cambodia

by Nick Cain

Since I started working in microfinance early last year, I’ve met with and interviewed dozens of borrowers and their families.  I’ve conducted visits in all sorts of ways: sitting in a chair (or falling out of one), standing at a store counter, talking through a gate, leaning on the hood

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Vittana in Nicaragua – An update from the field

by Nick Cain
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Over the course of the last month and a half, you might have noticed that many of the students appearing on our site are from Nicaragua.  That’s because, with the support of the Vittana team, our partner organization, AFODENIC, is doing an outstanding job marketing, administering, and scaling its student

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