telophase | (no subject)

I just loaned $25 to a woman in Mongolia to purchase more stock for her clothing stall. Microloans for the win!

I've been loaning through Kiva.org for about a year now, and had enough of my loans repaid to send it back out to another entrepreneur. The basic setup is that Kiva works with microfinance lenders in countries across the world to supply small loans to help with their businesses. You can contribute towards one or more loans in $25 increments, and as the borrower pays the loan back, you get the money back in your Kiva account proportional to the amount you loaned. You can withdraw the money or re-loan it. I've got about $100* in Kiva right now, and re-loan it when I get $25 or more built up in paybacks. I logged in today to find that one of my borrowers had paid her loan back in full only halfway through her loan term (woo!), so I re-loaned it to the woman above.

I've only had 1 default so far, and Kiva says it's due to the Central Bank of Tanzania giving them a runaround with the funds and not the borrowers, so I hope they're doing OK.

* Mostly survey money, commissions, and other things that show up in Paypal, which I consider to be fun money that I can spend in frivolous or not-so-frivolous ways if I want. :)

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Thanks for the heads up on Kiva. I am so going to start doing this, it helps out people but it is not really a charity. As the old saying goes, "Give a man a fish, feed him for a day, teach a man to fish, feed him for life."

I love doing it. :) There's a few charities I give to that do things like give corrective surgery to children and supply mosquito nets in Africa* but I keep coming back to Kiva.

* Especially close to my heart as I contracted malaria in Tanzania, although it was a mild case with no relapses. :)

Yes, I joined Team Fandom when you linked to kiva the first time and have four loans running now, so yay you!

Woo-hoo! :D

Thank you for the reminder! I had some loan repayments I could loan out again!
Yay for Kiva!!

That's pretty cool! I'm in. I just made my first 4 micro loans.

The more the merrier!

I love Kiva, I've been doing it for a year now.

This is really a neat idea. Thanks for sharing it! Next month, when I've got a little more in my bank account, I'll put up some money.

That is amazing, thank you SO MUCH for spotlighting this! Definitely going to get involved.

Thanks for the signal boost! I'll be sure to start one when I can.