Yesterday I got an e-mail from Kiva with the heading, “Good news; you’ve been repaid!” The loan in question was for $25, and I then had a choice between getting my money back or the pleasant task of choosing another recipient for my largesse. I decided this time to re-lend the money to a group of Guatemalan women.
Kiva is a non-profit organization that facilitates microfinance loans to small enterprises around the world. My $25, always part of a larger pool, had already assisted a group of four farmers in Sudan; and then Claudia, a woman in Huancayo, Peru, who started a little Internet café in her home and is now expanding to an in-town location. Kiva loan recipients have a terrific record of repaying their loans, and Kiva facilitates recycling the loans once they are repaid. Shades of Ben Franklin, who developed a similar program of his own to help young men start businesses of their own.
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