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A Fistful Of Dollars: The Story of a Kiva.org Loan from Kieran Ball on Vimeo.
(via Kiva.org Newsletter)
Remo's Blog
“Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.” – Dalai Lama
Tagged with kiva …
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 has to offer today and I plan to keep increasing the number of my investments over time.
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 my Kiva-Friends:
# Kolja (coverage 1 & coverage 2)
# Exsila
# Alfonso Rodriguez (coverage)
# Stefan (coverage)
If you’re also a Kiva-Friend, please leave a comment with your status :-).
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 ;-)
Second Kiva-load repaid, reinvested in Guatemala
My second Kiva-loan has been repaid recently. That means that my first two loans were repaid 100%. I reinvested the money in Guatemala and added three new investments to my portfolio (now containing 7 investments).
Kiva is really fun and I lust love it.
Can I call myself a business angel now? ;-)
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 AWSOME? You can help entrepreneurs generale wealth, get the money back 100%, help some other entrepreneur generate wealth, get the money back 100%, …, etc.
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 funds by the end of the year.
It really would be cool to earn some money while lending it to Kiva. Actually Kiva is planning to do so, according to Premal Shah in the Venture Voice interview (highlighings made by myself):
I think it would be exciting to let people earn a rate of return where they were financially indifferent between Kiva where they are changing somebody’s life, and their bank account (on a risk adjusted basis). I think that is possible.
I know that for some people it may sound ethically questionable or even absurd wanting to make money out of "charity". But from a economically point of view you have to face reality: Every dollar you own is in stiff competition with lots of purposes you could use the money for. If Kiva would provide financial incentives, Kiva would have a much larger negotiation power under this stiff competition, and ultimately more money would be loaned to Kiva-entrepreneurs. And imagine that just 50% of the money laying around unused on bank accounts would be used for Kiva-purposes. It would change the world!
If you haven’t loaned any money via Kiva yet, please check it out with a $25 loan. It’s awesome!
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 world’s working poor make great strides towards economic independence. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates from the business you’ve sponsored. As loans are repaid, you get your loan money back.
http://www.kiva.org/about
I first heard about Kiva over at Stefan some while ago. And a few weeks ago I granted my first two $25 loans to two Mexican entrepreneurs.
Cool things about Kiva:
- The repayment rate is 95%, i.e. the lended money can be used over and over again
- Absolute transparency with fotos and journals
- Already over $3 Mio lended
More Links:
- Interview with Kiva’s President Premal Shah
- Stefan about his first investments
- Documentary about Kiva
- Article about Social Entrepreneurship of Adrian Locher
