Microfinance for the masses

We've all heard about Mohd Yunus, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning entrepreneur who brought microfinance to Bangladesh's poor via the Grameen Bank. When I first discovered microfinance, I thought it was a fantastic idea - loaning small sums of money to the underprivileged, in most cases a group of women who are collectively responsible for the loan, which they then use as capital to create a livelihood, e.g. by buying goats to breed for meat and milk. The key breakthrough in this idea is that by loaning the money primarily to women, who are supposedly more financially responsible, and to a group that is collectively responsible for the loan, which imposes social pressures on group members to cough up the money, the loans are more secure - so far, Grameen Bank boasts a 90% repayment rate since their inception.

The thing I didn't know was how to participate in projects like these. But one fine day, I discovered Kiva. Their mission is to "connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty" - an admirable goal if I've ever heard of one. Through Kiva, one can scroll through a list of entrepreneur profiles from all over the world who are in need of these microcredit loans and choose the person or people that you want to sponsor. Kiva then partners with existing expert microfinance institutions to disburse the money to these entrepreneurs. Throughout the course of the loan, which usually lasts for six to twelve months, lenders can receive journal updates and track the status of loan repayments. And the best part is, you can lend as little as USD25!


I chose Keo Sokdy, a 38 year old Cambodian woman with four children who works as a rice dealer and a teacher in her village. Who will you choose?


However, loaning your own money isn't all that you can do - you can get other people to GIVE Kiva vast sums of money, specifically USD2.5 million from American Express through their Members Project. Yes, that's right. $2.5 million to fight poverty. Vote for Kiva now! And if you're not an American Express card holder, get your friends who are to vote for them.