Kiva is the organization you have read about in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and heard about on NPR, PBS and MSNBC. They let YOU disperse loans directly around the world and change lives, $25 at a time.
Welcome to my world financial empire, and to those of you who worry about the troubles you hear about around the globe, feeling hopeless helpless to make a difference: wake up. There is something you can do. You can have a direct impact on improving and empowering hard working honest men and women in places you may never see in your travels. You can directly choose who you help and see every cent of every dollar go where YOU want it to go!
Microfinance or microloans are simply that; rather modest loans to farmers, new businesses, education programs, food co-ops, service workers, family businesses, health centers and more, in developing regions of the world’s economy.
Collectively, microfinacers group together and provide the capital; the $$ for loans that are dispersed to bakers, farmers, small manufacturers, teachers and students in Central and South America, Asia and Africa. Kiva provides a web-based platform to let someone like you or I work with existing microfinance organizations, already on the ground working around the globe. Many have functioned very effectively for years, and have excellent track records in lending and payback rates. The default rates on microfinacial loans are far below the default rates on consumer loans in the USA. Farmers get loans to buy seeds and animals, widows get loans to start home-based food shops, families work hard and get modest lones required to pay school fees to get their children educated, obtaining their own future independence.
My experience with Kiva for the last three years is nothing but positive. I have made many small loans, applied in small packets of $25 for example. A farmer in Kajikstan may get a loan for $900 to get seed and feed for the start of the growing season, and they get the total from many of Kiva’s online lenders clicking in with packets of $25, $50, until the total is dedicated. Before the loan is dispersed, you (the microbanker) already see the monthly repayment plan and the loan is dispersed. Log in any time to Kiva and you can see a complete historical record of scheduled payments as the year progresses and the loans are consistently payed down.
Over the last few years, I have not had any of my loans involved in any default status. Often when that does happen in the Kiva system, you can see that circumstances such as floods and earthquakes may be the problem; those taking the loans make superhuman efforts to pay their loans off. They sell bread from their new bakery ovens, they get their produce to the city markets with the new motor-scooter, they pay off their children’s school costs by the time school ends. Best of all, you the microfinaner have had complete control of where and when your resources have been applied to create a bit more of stability and a bit more of local economy.
There are other non-financial benefits as well. When some men in a dusty mountain town are bad-mouthing Americans, Canadians and their soldiers walking around in their country, the old town baker yells back at them reminding them that a hundred average everyday American and Canadians financed the new flour mill generator, and repairs to the local bakery that made the bread they are eating with their tea.
So if you think you cannot do anything to make a difference in foreign affairs, you may be very surprised what you can do if you tell your friends to give you $25 for your birthday for the Kiva financing pot, then log into your new Kiva account and go for it. It is the gift that keeps on giving. Funny thing is, these people pay you back, and then you get to loan it out again, and again, and again. Check Kiva out at:
MYBHTHBTDKYD - KPMitton
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