“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” — Maimonides I love microlending. Here’s how it works: You give an entrepreneur in a developing country a loan for his business, e.g. to buy a water irrigation system for his…
Tag: Microfinance
A Fistful Of Dollars: The Story of a Kiva Loan
Kiva: 6 New Loans
I recently invested in 6 more Kiva-Entrepreneurs. Now I’m focusing on Loans with repayment terms of less than 12 months to accelerate the reinvestment cycle. Since February 2007 I have invested in 17 Kiva-Entrepreneurs, and already 6 Loans have been fully repaid. I still believe that Kiva is one of the most-valueble services the web…
Kiva Status: 2 More Loans Repaid & Reinvested
In the meantime 2 of my 7 remaining open loans have been repaid 100%. I reinvested the money to two groups in Tanzania. My Kiva-Status (since February 2007): # 11 loans # 4 fully repaid # 7 open loans # 0% default rate # Feeling: I love it Here is the status of some of…
Kiva sold out!
It’s crazy — Kiva is sold out! Lucky enough I’ve just funded two new businesses in Samoa a couple of minutes ago (I’m getting kivaddicted ;-)
First Kiva-loan repaid, reinvested in Africa
Four months after my first Kiva-investments, my first loan was paid back 100%. I reinvested the money in Togo (Africa) to a female entrepreneur who runs a general store. Meanwhile, over $7 million has been invested through Kiva from 70’000 people. Most interestingly, 99.76% of all the money has been paid back 100% — isn’t this just…
50% of my first Kiva-money has been paid back!
Two months after my first two $25 loans at Kiva, 50% of the money has already been paid back. It has to be noted that you cannot actually withdraw or reloan these funds until after the loan term is complete. In my case this means 3–12 months, i.e. I should be able to reuse those…
My first Kiva-investments
I fell in love with Kiva. Actually I think its one of the sexiest projects on the Web right now, along with Wikipedia et al. Kiva lets you connect with and loan money to unique small businesses in the developing world. By choosing a business on Kiva.org, you can “sponsor a business” and help the…