Kiva's Christian-associated lenders, tools for sorting Kiva loans

[firecat]

I just made some more loans via http://kiva.org. My "strategy" when lending has been to lend to people in a variety of different countries. But this time around I also decided that I'm not going to make any more loans that are associated with explicitly Christian charities. Personally, I would rather support lenders that don't encourage or require their loan recipients to adopt certain beliefs or behaviors (unrelated to paying back their loan).

I'm sure that not all of the Christian-associated lenders are pushy that way, but some of them, based on the lender descriptions on Kiva, sound like they are. E.g., "Esperanza International Dominican Republic, a partner of HOPE International" includes as part of their lender description:

We define poverty as the condition of the human being as a result of their broken relationships with God, other people, the creation and himself, as a consequence of sin. We expect, then, to assist them in their release from poverty through a transforming development process, which we define as the reconciliation process where the individual is restored to bless and be blessed, becoming an instrument for God’s Kingdom.

I defined "explicitly Christian" as a lender or charity that mentions Christianity in its mission statement.

I did a bunch of this research myself, and afterward I found the following list of Christian-associated lenders. My research agreed with their list. The post and comments also mention some tools that automatically sort Kiva loans in various ways, including exclusion (or inclusion) of religiously affiliated lenders:

http://atheist-monkey.blogspot.com/2009/08/kiva-mfi-checker.html#list

(I am not trying to bash Christianity or tell anyone what to do. This is about my own comfort and beliefs.)

Comments

[elainegrey]

As in one of the comment threads, the interest rates charged by some of the lending organizations look more concerning than mentioning Christianity -- but, geeze louise.... this is the creepy logical conclusion of the Calvinist theology that is pervasive in our culture enven when folks don't frame it in religious terms. I materially well off, you're not. I obviously am doing everything right. What's wrong with you?

[firecat]

I believe that Kiva is improving their efforts to work with lenders who charge reasonable rates. I could be wrong. It does stand to reason that administering small loans in countries without good infrastructure costs more than administering large loans in more-developed countries, so that interest rates might need to be somewhat higher. But I'm sure there are abuses, too.

[elainegrey]

The last time i did a loan or two i noticed the interest rates and began to wonder, but i'd hoped that Kiva was doing a good job finding appropriate lenders.

Now i'm wondering how blithely i can trust their vetting.

I still think it's a neat gift for the nephews and beats just sending money. I hope by the time the kids are old enough to need a stash of cash i will have given them enough loans and they will have seen the money get passed around a few times before they use it.

[firecat]

I wouldn't "blithely trust" their vetting. But there has been public criticism and Kiva has responded to it by describing their relationships with the lending institutions more completely. Some of the pages on Kiva for the lending institutions include lengthy discussions along these lines.

There's also the option of lending only through institutions that charge lower interest rates. That way people in some countries don't get your money, but almost every loan that makes it onto Kiva gets funded as far as I can tell, so you wouldn't be harming anyone by making that choice.

[flarenut]

Rates are a longstanding issue, but to some extent they're also a non-issue. Between doing the same amount of work to administer a much smaller chunk of money, wanting to pay a fair wage to the people who do that work, blah, blah, the costs are just higher. (This also one of the reasons people like the World Bank keep doing big, stupid megaprojects: if you have X number of staff, you can only produce bigger aid numbers by making each project bigger.)

The more important comparison is the interest rate for otherwise available in the country and the kind of payback time that borrowers are looking at. If my project is going to pay for itself in a year or two, the interest rate just isn't that big an issue.

[firecat]

If my project is going to pay for itself in a year or two, the interest rate just isn't that big an issue.

Excellent point. Most of the loans on Kiva are for 4-14 months as far as I can tell.