Microlending: A Little Loan Goes a Long Way
Kiva.org allows individuals to help entreprenuers in the developing world overcome poverty through micro-loans.
October/November 2007
By Bill Moore
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Komlan Semenou's furniture shop in Togo benefits from small loans arranged by Kiva.org.
DALIA PALCHIK
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When Muhammad Yunus, a Bangladeshi economics professor and the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner, started his experiment of loaning tiny sums of money to impoverished villagers in 1976, he set in motion a new financial industry known as micro-lending.
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It was the plight of a villager named Sufia Begum that inspired Yunus to launch what would become the Grameen Bank, which was founded on the principle that small amounts of capital can enable the poor to lift themselves out of poverty. Begum was a 21-year-old mother of three who supported her family by weaving strips of bamboo into stools. The bamboo was purchased with a loan from a middleman, and at the end of the day, she had to sell the finished stool back to him to repay the loan. Her profit for one day’s hard labor? Two cents!
In 2005, Matt and Jessica Flannery revolutionized micro-lending with Kiva.org. The San Francisco Bay-area couple developed the Web site to enable those of us who enjoy the privilege of America’s wealth to “meet” and help needy borrowers in the developing world. Working through more than 60 partnering microfinance institutions in some 35 countries that screen and mentor borrowers, Kiva is the first and only Internet microfinancer that allows you to select whom you wish to fund and how much you wish to loan. The loans are then distributed on a monthly basis to borrowers.
The local microfinance institutions post personal information and photos of the borrowers, along with a description of their business plans on the Web site, so if you are a Kiva lender, you can get to know who your loan is assisting. Most of Kiva’s loans go to Africa, where the majority of funds are for tiny agriculture-related startups: money to buy a cow, feed for chickens or a peanut grinder. In South America and Central Asia, the loans are more retail in nature: corner food stalls, bicycle repair shops or tailors needing cloth.