Kiva – Help An Entrepreneur On The Other Side Of The Planet
Posted by Lite on October 18, 2007
A few days ago I wrote about the Blog Action Day movement , one of many movements on the web that set their sights on imporving people’s lives (not in the consumer-way of “improving people’s lives”). Another one I’ve encountered recently (actually on LinkedIn, odd) is Kiva.org. Microfinancing for third world entrepreneurs.
Many times over the past few years (and especially in my time in South America) I thought about how lucky I was. Much of my success in various aspects in life is attributed to my personality, skills and talents (like any other person walking this planet), but one must also admit that part of that success is sheer luck. Sometimes it’s a bigger part, sometimes smaller.
A part of my luck was to be born into an amazing and fertile surrounding (family, friends, co-workers, fellow countrymen, social status, etc.). Acknowledging this allows you to understand there are other people in the world with similar (or equivelant, as much as one can compare these things) basic characteristics, but lack the luck of being born in the right place at the right time.
Kiva, a non-profit organization founded a couple of years ago by an American couple, is one of the many ways to attempt and transfer some of the luck people like me had over to people who didn’t. It is true there are many organizations in this field, but at Kiva they have taken an amazing Web 2.0 approach. You lend online (there are other online-lending sites but they’re intended on loaning in the western world) and help real people offline, on the other side of the planet.
These are the kinds of things the Internet was made for.
Other people’s thoughts about this:
- Kuro5hin
- Virtual News (En) – Microfinance Meets P2P Technology
- Even world-famous (within us geeks), 37Signals
A small note: as there are plenty of scams or plain failures out there, you should always watch yourself when lending money. I won’t take any responsibility for anything you do after reading this post. I, myself, have lended cautiosly on the Kiva.org site and will monitor the development and decide if I want to lend more there, and to whom, as time goes by.
| Terschelling Island, The Netherlands, October 2007 |
