Kiva: making microfinance personal

Everyone has seen charity advertising that uses images of unfortunate people in difficult situations. Sometimes we react to these images by donating, yet often we react by shutting the images out, thinking “these people are fake examples, and my money will be wasted by the organisation before it gets to a needy person.”

If the last quote sounds like you, check out Kiva.

Kiva is a brilliant concept: Connect people who are trying to escape poverty directly with people who care - and who can afford small donations or investments to help others. This is ‘microfinance’ or ‘micro-lending’ - arranging tiny loans to real people who can’t get finance or credit from any traditional source.

At Kiva you can see a list of people and groups, located in countries around the world. Each one has a story and is asking for a specific amount of money to help complete a project or goal.

You can simply register at Kiva, then start contributing to small loans for the people whose stories, locations, ambitions or situations are interesting to you. Later you can see the difference that your involvement makes, via updates from the recipient.

If you are not one to give hand-outs to people in need (for whatever bizarre reason), note that Kiva is not about pure charity: the transactions are loans. When the loan is repayed, you can reinvest - possibly with the same borrower who has already proved that your investment and their efforts were not fruitless.