Kiva microloan charity

[firecat]

The Kiva microloan charity organization lets individuals lend money to individuals or small groups in areas like Africa and Asia via the Internet. You don't get interest on the loan, but it is repaid to you, and you can either lend it out again or withdraw it.

Kiva initially repaid lenders at the end of the loan term (typically 10 months to 18 months), but they've just changed their policy so that they repay lenders each time the loan recipient pays an installment (typically once a month). So you can get your money back faster.

I just went online to lend out my accumulated "Kiva credit." A lot of other people were doing the same thing, presumably because of this change in policy. I was refreshing the pages of several loan requests and watching the "amount still needed" drop every minute.

It is cool to watch people trying to help other people.

My lender page: http://www.kiva.org/lender/firecatstef

Comments

[marea93.livejournal.com]

Cool idea. Wish I could afford to participate.

[prairierabbit.livejournal.com]

I've been doing Kiva, thanks IIRC to another of your posts. It's very cool to help someone do something directly when they are clear around the world. I picked someone in Samoaa because one of my coworkers is from Samoaa and it was a way to reach out to someone living in a society that I'm learning about through him.

[firecat]

Yay!