Kiva is a micro lending website – the first person to person one. It allows individuals around the world to help and lend money to entrepreneurs in developing countries. They have a large database of people around the world that need money for their small business (Nan needing money to run her biscuits selling business in Cambodia, or Mrs. Womama to run her hardware shop in Togo).
Kiva has real people looking into enterpreneuers claiming they need loans and evaluate them all. You can donate as small as $25 towards one borrowers need or as much as you would like to. Most of the loans have zero percent interest. The borrowers will have a set period of time to return the money either in increments or all at once at the end of period (1 month, 2 month, 1 year, etc).
I personally much rather give a no interest loan to someone to start a business for them, give the money back, and not feel they owe me anything rather than just giving some money to fix some short term problems. I really liked Kiva’s idea so I signed up and gave my first loan.
$25 (the minimum donation amount) is not much for most of us, but can sure make us feel good knowing we are helping other enthusiastic entrepreneurs around the world.
You can find a short description of how Kiva works here.
