Supporting Our Maintenance Community – Kiva

UpKeep Donates to Maintenance Needs in our Communities

This week, we decided to take a slightly different approach to our community donation. Kiva is an organization working towards financial equality around the world. More than 1.7 billion people around the world are unbanked and can’t access the financial services they need. Kiva crowdfunds loans, rather than donations, in order to create a partnership based on dignity and inclusion. As a young start-up, we understand the grit it takes to grow a business and admire everyone on Kiva's platform working hard to do the same.

One of our employees, Sarah Park, mentioned how excited she is about Kiva and recommended that we donate to some different causes through their platform this week. We are lending to two different causes - read on to hear their stories and why Sarah chose them!

1. Meet Caren!

Caren is a wife and mother, a jeepney driver and operator, and a supporter of her husband's career as a fish vendor. A jeepney is a convreted-jeep, used for public transportation. These are the main sources of income for the family. Caren aspires to strengthen their businesses (transportation and fishing) to ensure a stable future for their five children.

We're loaning to Caren to perform maintenance on their jeepney to buy new tires, engine oil, gas-tank maintenance, and more. When choosing this cause, Sarah reasoned, "Caren's mission to strengthen her family businesses aligns well with our core values here at UpKeep. Additionally, we want to support her efforts to extend her assets' lifespans to provide a better life for her family."

If you too would like to support Caren, you can find their page here.

2. Meet Ali!

Ali lives and works in Pakistan, and has been running a low-cost private school to help the children of his community. The school strives to foster an environment of respect. Since the school’s building is quite old, it needs urgent repairing and maintenance.

Sarah selected to support Ali and his school because, "Facilities are one of the most common use cases for UpKeep, especially school facilities. We're excited to support Ali and his goal to perform maintenance around his school to better support all the students and faculty there."

If you too would like to support Ali, you can find their page here.

To recommend a cause, please do so here!