Sunday Spotlight: Kiva.org

It is a brand new year of brand new possibilities. And I am writing my first post of the year about a community that helps make brand new possibilities into reality. If we are ready to accept the reality with open heart, all of us have a potential to help someone else lead a better life. We can chose to keep complaining about our own and not do anything about it. Or we can be grateful for what we’ve got and try to make a difference for someone else. If you are the one of the latter kind, Kiva.org is the place for you to go to. I came across Kiva.org some time back but didn’t register as a lender until recently. I am yet to give my first loan but I am really glad to be participating in UPrinting.com’s Kiva Blogathon.

As Kiva’s own website describes, “Kiva's mission is to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty. Kiva is the world's first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend to unique entrepreneurs around the globe.” What I find unique about Kiva is that they provide “loans” and not charity or donation to people who want to be entrepreneurs. This is very empowering for the individual who receives the money as there comes a responsibility with it. It makes the person confident of their self-worth and doesn’t make them resent for living on charity. It boosts the entrepreneur’s self-esteem to know they’ve been shown confidence in by their lender. They are expected to put in an effort to set up and run a business profitably so the money can be returned to the lender. I feel this is a very powerful way of touching someone’s life and improving it.

Also reassuring is Kiva’s effort to maintain transparency throughout the whole process. Usually when one gives a donation or charity, there is an underlying resignation that the money may or may not reach the proposed cause. But we give it away anyway for our mental and moral satisfaction. Kiva helps you “give” the money to someone in need but not “give away”. There is accountability in the whole process. There is a basic assumption that the entrepreneur may fail and you will never see your money back. But at least there is an expectation that the entrepreneur should put in some effort to make the business work. It may or may not. But what is important is the intention of the giver and the taker. Kiva has set up a great network of fellows and volunteers worldwide who make sure the feedback loop is constantly fed and the lenders are updated with the status of the “project”. And on a given lender’s profile you can see the history and success of the loans they’ve given to the date. I was pleasantly surprised to see almost 95% of the loans being repaid and hence being reused over and over to change so many lives.

A Fistful Of Dollars: The Story of a Kiva.org Loan from Kieran Ball on Vimeo.

Kiva community is made up of various levels and teams that contribute to the whole process in their won capacity. The core team looks after the management and administration at the highest level. But the supporters (corporate and institutional partners), field partners (micro-finance institutions), fellows (individuals who get to visit and experience Kiva’s working on the field) and volunteers are the people that make Kiva a grass-root level organisation. I am also impressed with the ‘apps gallery’ that Kiva has developed. These various applications help those interested setup alerts to watch the progress of and get notified of the loan requirements that they’re interested in. For example, I wish to give a loan in India to an entrepreneur in the field of education and computing. Kiva’s Facebook and Twitter alerts let me set up an alert with these criteria. So when a request from a field partner or an entrepreneur gets entered into Kiva’s database, I get an alert that I might want to consider this opportunity for making my contribution. Isn’t that just wonderful!

So if you think you are ready to touch someone’s life and make a difference, head to Kiva.org, register yourself as a lender and make that contribution. You will literally see it keep coming back at you over the course of your life. Happy 2010 and happy loaning!!!

You, too, can be a banker to the poor: Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof on fighting poverty in the developing world with a click of your mouse.(OPINION)(kiva.org): ... An article from: New York Times Upfront