Loans that Change Lives

In follow-up to my Thanksgiving post, I made micro-loans to two African entrepreneurs through Kiva.org: Jerioth Wanjiru, a 27-year-old hairdresser in Nakuru, Kenya who needs expansion capital to effectively service her growing customer base; and Mary Gachai, a Kenyan landlord who uses her rental income to support orphaned children.

I was delighted by how easy it was to browse by region for entrepreneurs in need (I wanted to focus on east Africa because of my sense of the tremendous opportunity and need for entrepreneurial infrastructure there during my visit in 2001), read profiles to select loan candidates, see what organizations are tending the investments locally, sign up, and donate via a nicely integrated PayPal. Their “marketing” has just the right touch - when you check out, they very nicely suggest a 10% match to Kiva itself to keep the lights on). As Fred W. would say, there is authenticity here.

In addition, Kiva has some very cool social features, like badges you can put on your site to track these entrepreneurs, and the ability to see who else is participating in your loans and create a profile page others can see.

I’ll add badges to my site soon and keep you all posted on how things play out with my load portfolio - in the meantime, please check out Kiva.org if you’re in a mood to do some good this year.