John Colton's blog

I first heard about "microcredit" several years ago; my brother-in-law Gary was involved with some programs (probably still is). In case you are unfamiliar with the concept, microcredit is loaning small amounts of money to people living in poverty (e.g. in 3rd world countries), who would not otherwise be able to get a loan because they are too poor and have no collateral. The idea is that these people can use the loaned money to fund small-scale entrepreneurial ventures and improve their standard of living. See this wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcredit

I love a lot of things about that concept, probably too numerous to mention in a short blog post. Muhammad Yunus won the 2006 Nobel Peace prize, in large part for his microcredit efforts with the Grameen Bank.

Onward: I heard about Kiva a couple of months ago and asked Gary if it was a legit microcredit site. He said yes, and said that he even knows the people running the site. Kiva is a way for people in the U.S. and other "first world" countries to bankroll some of these microcredit loans. You donate $25 or more towards a loan--you get to choose the recipient--and then it gets repaid typically over a 3 - 12 month schedule. 15-40 different people might combine to bankroll any given microcredit loan, depending on the size of the request and the size of the donations. 100% of your loan goes to the entrepreneur; administrative overhead is funded through separate donations. When your money is repaid, you can decide whether to use it to fund another loan, or whether to get it back.

After talking it over with Pauline, we decided we needed to participate. Here are the people whose loans we are currently helping to fund:

http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&action=about&id=62967
http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&action=about&id=59208
http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&action=about&id=61338
http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&action=about&id=61232

I urge anyone who reads this to give serious thought towards participating.

If you are LDS, also think about joining the Kiva Mormons group and have an Angel Moroni icon show up at the bottom of your loans (some of them, at least).