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.
November 29th, 2006 12:21
I am the lawyer of a very wealthy Nigerian ambassador how has recently died in a firey car-crash. Kindly send me $10,000.00 via wire transfer and I will in turn, send you $1.5MM same day. Thank You kind sir. Bless You.
;-)
December 14th, 2006 18:06
[…] Inspired in equal parts by Greg Cohn’s experience with Kiva.org and the awarding of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize to Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank for their work in micro-credit, I decided to make a couple of small loans to enterpreneurs in the developing world. For those who are not familiar with the concept of microcredit, Wikipedia offers this description: Microcredit is the extension of very small loans (microloans) to the unemployed, to poor entrepreneurs and to others living in poverty who are not bankable. These individuals lack collateral, steady employment and a verifiable credit history and therefore cannot meet even the most minimum qualifications to gain access to traditional credit. Microcredit is a part of microfinance, which is the provision of financial services to the very poor; apart from loans, it includes savings, microinsurance and other financial innovations. […]
December 31st, 2006 16:40
GlobeFunder.com is working on social loans P2P too-but to drive scalable funding we will soon launch a marketplace for investment lending to widen the market and increase capital.
Millions of dollars in unmet demand for microloans still remains. Please keep writing about it.
Thank you. Brian
March 25th, 2007 07:46
Is it ok?
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August 29th, 2008 08:16
I think you have just tempted me into doing this…
Will try and convince the powers at be at work too…
September 4th, 2008 18:58
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