Casey and I just watched an inspiring program about micro-credit on PBS. In case you haven't heard, micro-credit involves folks from the developed world lending small amounts of money ($25) to those in the developing world so that they can start or expand their small businesses.
Through the PBS program, we discovered a website called http://www.kiva.org/, where you can browse a list of entrepreneurs, lend money to an individual, and track the progress and repayment. The website has a FAQ section for those of you who have questions, but let me say that micro-credit programs have repayment rates close to 100%, and http://www.kiva.org/ has a solid 100% repayment rate. Once an entrepreneur repays his or her loan to you, you can then reinvest that money in someone else's project, or use the cash to buy yourself a stash of chocolate.
I've loaned money to a woman expanding her toy stand in Ecuador as well as a woman in Ghana selling second-hand shoes. Kiva puts a face to the name, because they enable you to see photos of the entrepreneurs as well as their businesses. One last note: micro-credit programs have been so wildly successful that Bangladeshi Muhammad Yunus won the 2006 Nobel Prize for his work with the Grameen Bank and small loans. Here's to addressing poverty from the bottom up!
One Quart, Resealable, Plastic Bag: Temporarily tethered to the suburbs, two adventure junkies travel the world in pursuit of the planet's nicest people.
2 comments:
Hey Kiwi!
Just read your post and also just got back from China yesterday! I'm so glad you saw the Kiva piece - I saw it on PBS recently too. What a great organization and concept, eh? Let me know if you'd like to see my Kiva profile page sometime. Hope all is well with you and Casey...Love, French Fry
If Nick Kristof supports Kiva, you can count me in, too.
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