Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Microloan #1

As promised, here's the scoop on my first loan through Kiva.org. 

I picked a lady from Nigeria, named Margaret Adedeyinbo. She runs a food market and asked for a loan of $950, to be paid back over a period of 8 months. My $25 will be combined with funds from a bunch of other people, then sent to her so she can buy frozen foods to sell in her shop. Once she repays the loan, I'll get that $25 back and loan it to someone else.

Kiva's "field partner" on this loan is a group named Lift Above Poverty Organization (their official site: LAPO). They've loaned nearly $2M to over 3,000 people... and have a 0% default rate. That's hard to imagine, but it's what the site says (and yes, I poked around online a bit before clicking "pay").

So, I'm excited to see how this turns out!

2 comments:

Kim said...

This is pretty cool, Dan. I'll definitely have to go check it out too! Where did you hear about it originally?

Unknown said...

Hi, Dan! I've heard lots of great things about Kiva. Good luck with your microloaning! If you're interested in another resource for donating, I work for UniversalGiving, an online non-profit connecting people to reputable projects, without taking any cut on donations. Check us out at www.universalgiving.org if you're curious.

Best wishes,
Cheryl Mahoney
cmahoney@universalgiving.org