KIVA

Kiva

Inspired by writing a magazine article Chris Chaplow founder of Andalucia.com has created the Andalucia.com Kiva team and donated €5000 of advertising to KIVA and have created an Andalucia Kiva Team so that friends of Andalucia.com can join the Kiva project.

Kiva’s tag line is “Loans that save lives” and it enables people like you and I to lend small amounts of money to an entrepreneur, in the developing world for a specific project.

How it works?

Lenders browse profiles of entrepreneurs in need, and choose someone to lend to. When they lend, using PayPal or their credit cards, Kiva collects the funds and then passes them along to a micro-finance partner who distributes the loan funds to the selected entrepreneur. Often, the partners also provide training and other assistance to maximize the entrepreneur’s chances of success.

Over time, usually six months to a year, the entrepreneur repays their loan. Repayment schedules and other updates are posted on Kiva and emailed to lenders who wish to receive them. Lenders do not charge any interest. When lenders get their money back, they can re-lend to someone else in need, donate their funds to Kiva (to cover operational expenses), or withdraw their funds.

Clearly this would not be possible without the internet or Micro-finance partners. In case you had not heard of it Microfinance is the supply of loans, savings, and other basic financial services to the poor.

How do I help?

Go to http://www.kiva.org/team/andalucia   and join the team.

Send this email to a friend and join the Kiva Andalucia team

Dear friend,

I want to recruit you to my lending team, Andalucia.com, on Kiva, a non-profit website that allows you to lend as little as $25 to a specific low-income entrepreneur in the developing world. You choose who to lend to - whether a baker in Afghanistan, a goat herder in Uganda, a farmer in Peru, a restaurateur in Cambodia, or a tailor in Iraq - and as they repay the loan, you get your money back.

If you join my lending team, we can work together to alleviate poverty. Once you're a part of the team, you can choose to have a future loan on Kiva "count" towards our team's impact. The loan is still yours, and repayments still come to you - but you can also choose to have the loan show up in our team's collective portfolio, so our team's overall impact will grow!

Kiva “Loans that save lives”   www.kiva.org

Essential Magazine Article
This is a copy of the article that Chris Chaplow wrote for the May 2009 edition of the Essential Magazine after discovering Kiva on the internet.

Living in Andalucia