Has anyone has any experience with Kiva.org - Micro Lending?
Are they reliable, legitimate, and did you get paid back?
Yes, yes, usually.
They typically have a volunteer who resides in the areas where money is being lent who will vouch for the people who borrow.
Great program, hope they expand geographically in the coming years
My uncle has given money in my name to Kiva for the past two Christmases. It was basically like a gift card where you pick people to donate to and then they pay you back over time. It’s an interesting idea in that when you do get paid back in full, you can relend the money to someone else.
I don’t know if all the money has been paid back yet, but a good bit of it has. It is a legit organization, and I think microcredit is a good development model overall. If you’re not sure about it start small and take it from there.
Okay, just checked my account and two of the three people I loaned to have paid back in full, the third is at 47% right now.
It’s something that Stuff You Should Know (of howstuffworks.com) and Steve Colbert are strong supporters of.
[quote]postholedigger wrote:
It’s something that Stuff You Should Know (of howstuffworks.com) and Steve Colbert are strong supporters of.[/quote]
and Mr. Hillary Clinton
I read a book about the Grameen bank, which is the first that started this stuff, and it seems to work well. In a nutshell there is no big corrupted humanitarian organisation with employees that works in their interest. The most miserable people gets money without any garantee and they start a small business. They get the benefit of their excruciating hard labour and they manage to build themselves a better live out of the will to survive. never underestimate the will to survive.
but yeah if Mr.Hillary Clinton supports it that means it is crap
I’ve made 28 donations so far, with a 0% default and 0% delinquency rate.
As far as I can tell, it’s pretty much kick-ass option-- you give money to people-- and not just a faceless organization. You’re giving it WHERE it needs to go, not to corporate HQ so it has to funnel through 16 layers of mid-level managers. You actually LEND it to someone, so they are encouraged to work their way up rather than just becoming dependent on hand-outs.
Best of all, they give you your money back so you can re-lend it or, if you want/need, take it all back. Hell, that’s better than what the stock market will often do for you–
http://www.kiva.org/about/press/
re: legit or not, this might help–