Peer-to-Peer Micro-credit

I caught a fascinating and uplifting episode of Frontline on PBS tonight where they highlighted a Bay Area company called Kiva.org. Kiva connects donors with folks in impoverished areas in need of micro-loans for their small businesses; a loan as small as $275, for instance, helped a woman in Africa start a small peanut butter business in her village. It’s called peer-to-peer micro-credit. Kiva has a 100% loan repayment rate and regular updates are published about the businesses that receive loans. This is yet another example of how the Internet, perhaps more efficiently than any process has at any time in human history, marries those with needs with those with capacity/resources. Typical banks would never go into poor villages half-way around the world to loan, what in their minds are, paltry sums of money. But services like Kiva allow individuals with small annual budgets for charitable giving to create a real connection with someone trying to improve their life and that of their family — and in the end it’s not a charitable donation because the individual repays the micro-loan and has the satisfaction of a new and successful business.