Faithful readers know of our blog’s social project we started back in November. We fund microfinance projects via Kiva, an online non-for-profit “brokerage” service between those in need of a micro finance loan and those willing to fund them.
Over the past months, readers from The Road, friends, friends of friends, and colleagues jumped in, and joined our Kiva lenders’ team. At this moment, we total over $6,400 of loans (Check here for the latest status)
The system seems to work well, and after the initial investment in loans, the repayments started to come in two months after the first loan. At this moment, about US$2,000 of loans have been repaid.
It seems Kiva’s success caught on real fast. This week alone, they allocated US$1.8 million of microfinance loans. Quite impressive, if you consider that a typical loan is given in chunks of $25.
Kiva’s success is that big that often, like tonight, you log onto their site, and… they have ran out of people to allocate loans to.
A bit frustrating, knowing that at this moment I am ‘sitting’ on $600 of repaid loans I would like to reinvest, but on the other hand, their success and apparent efforts to keep up with the success of microfinancing, and particularly success of the brokerage-system of Kiva, shows a difference can be made.
As I am, right now, looking at the screen of the lenders page, searching for people to allocate loans to, I only see grey’d-out fields of entrepreneurs with the remark ‘Fully Funded’, I am thinking of the song of John Lennon. And “imagine” that maybe that will be, one day, the status of poverty in the world. “We are sorry, but we no longer have people in need”.
Call me a dreamer.
Peter. Flemish, European, aid worker, blogger, expeditioner, sailor, traveller, husband, father, friend, nutcase. Not necessarily in that order.
Recent comments