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

[boxofdelights]

Thanks. This is useful.

[foxfirefey]

Oh man. I don't necessarily have a problem with a Christian based lender, but I certainly have a problem with one that blames poverty on the individual's "sinful" state. You might want to post about this to kiva, too.

[firecat]

Thanks, I will!

[sasha_feather]

+1

[amethystfirefly]

Ugh. My head exploded at that lender description.

-headdesks-

[zeborah]

Argh. That's such a terrible abuse of power. (And a terrible way to get sincere converts, as opposed to converts who are just pretending in order to get desperately needed money. And un-Christian: Jesus was pretty darn explicit that you help people who need it regardless of their religion. And, and, and, and.... It's just wrong.)

Thanks for the list, I'll keep it handy for my next visit to Kiva, and will pay more attention to the lenders from now on.

[flarenut]

What you said. It would be equally faith-based but far less crazy if they said poverty was about other people's broken relationship with god. It doesn't matter how right you are with the FSM if some other person overcharges and underpays you.

I'm terribly afraid

[flarenut]

that the process may well end with sincere converts, for a value of "sincere" that involves traumatic reprogramming. If you're in miserable enough condition and people beat on you hard enough, you'll start believing just to reduce the cognitive dissonance.

And thanks also

Re: I'm terribly afraid

[zeborah]

<nods> That's a useful distinction to make: people need to have the physical/financial and mental and emotional liberty, all three, to be able to judge whether or not Christianity will improve their life. And for lots of people it won't, and the God I believe in is totes cool with that.

[amethystfirefly]

It would be equally faith-based but far less crazy if they said poverty was about other people's broken relationship with god.

Oh, I love this.

[firecat]

As a non-theist Buddhist, I think it also plays as non-faith-based if you say poverty can be about other people's clinging to/hoarding/stealing material goods and money.

[lilacsigil]

Yes, I do the same thing - when I was 13, my Anglican school had a guest speaker who talked about giving sugar and lollies to the "child-like" people of PNG to "bring them to Christ" and that was the last time I donated anything without checking out the organisation first. I make my loans in South-East Asia and the Pacific (to keep it local) and I haven't run into many organisations that explicit, but I keep an eye out, and I'm glad other people are doing the same.

[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.

[shanaqui]

Ooh, I keep meaning to look at doing loans on Kiva. And I definitely wouldn't want to go through explicitly Christian lenders. Well, it's complicated: there's a difference between "influenced to do it by Christianity" and "pushing Christianity", but it's so difficult to judge that, so... /ramble

[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.

[firecat]

Yeah, I'm sure a lot of organizations that are explicitly Christian don't limit their help only to people who claim to be Christian. But I don't have the time to research which ones do, so I'm making the choice not to fund through any organization that explicitly claims to be Christian. There are lots of people on Kiva making the choice only to fund through those organizations, so I don't think I'm harming anyone by doing this.

[tedesson]

I have been reading Givewell http://www.givewell.org/ on vetting of charities. It's amazing how few charities can say if they've made any difference at all.

[erin_c_1978]

Same here. I'm a Christian, but I have massive problems with that description of poverty and would not be cool with donating to an organization that espoused it.

[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]

Ooh, I hadn't heard of that site and it looks very useful. Thanks!

(I'm not amazed, though.)

[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.

[cleverthylacine]

Oh holy crap yes. That's some major crazycakes logic there.

[solo]

Thank you! I lend through Kiva and this is very useful indeed.

"sinful" state

[(Anonymous)]

Hi, I ran into this thread accidentally, but have to make a comment. I used to have a strong Christian walk and hope to regain it someday. Not being that previous person, I will try to make a brief defense anyway.

I believe you and the person originally making these comments misunderstand these Christian organizations beliefs. As a matter of faith, we believe all people are fallen and in a "sinful" state. This has happened from the time of "Adam and Eve". It is not meant to be an attack on any person or group. Just saying that if man would never have sinned then the world would have been a very different place.

Also, if you have Christ and are poor and have faith you are still "rich". I have traveled much in third world country's and have seen first hand that difference faith can make. Of course, we all have a obligation to help others with basic needs including food and shelter. Christians and non-Christian have a moral obligation to help believer and non-believers alike.

I understand these moral obligations to be from God, but that is a different conversation.

Just hoping to clarify some of these organizations "statement of beliefs". These terms have special meanings to Christians and are not meant to be offensive by any means.

If you would have hard fact that some of these organization do not do good for all the people they serve that would be different.

However, I believe if you look you would find several Christian organizations reaching out to people of all walks of life. Including prostitutes, gays, drug users, prisoners etc.

Thank you,
God Bless,
James Larabee
WWJDjfl@yahoo.com

Re: "sinful" state

[firecat]

I understand that Christians believe all people are fallen and in a "sinful" state. I don't care what the people running Christian organizations believe about the people they help. But I do care how they go about helping. If an organization's help comes with pressure to get involved in Christianity (e.g. "become an instrument for God's Kingsom") and/or to adhere to certain behaviors that have nothing directly to do with improving their income, then I have no interest in supporting that organization. They might be doing all sorts of good, but it will be without my help; there are other organizations I can support.

PS: Lumping gay people in with people who break the law ("prostitutes, drug users, prisoners") is extremely offensive. Don't do that on my blog any more.

[leandra333.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this. I've wanted to donate to Kiva for a long time but definitely not to any religious-related causes. I, of course, didn't want/have time/care enough to do the research. Your list will help me make a better decision.