Kiva’s third world entrepreneurs will be receiving some VC funding this Christmas… in the amount of $100 from the Micro VC Maddy Fund.
Kiva.org is a microloan site that lends money to third world entrepreneures to help their businesses and grow markets and economies. So…
I’ve decided to facilitate this process and hopefully my daughter and I will learn from and teach each other something along the way.
My daughter will be receiving a gift certificate for $100 to invest in entrepreneurs who need access to capital. My expectation is that these tiny loans will be repaid and that I’ll provide Maddy with $100 next year to ad to her Micro VC Maddy Fund. Then we’ll sit down and have a talk about expectations and responsibilities. I think of this as a kind of ‘Pass It On’ project’. Maddy will be posting about on her blog at Pony Tail Club.
During the week between Christmas and New Years Madison will be responsible for using the Kiva site to find 4 receipients to loan $25. She will have to report to me why she chose this individual over all the others.
One of the most important in my mind is that she understands this act.
Loaning money to one person means that you’re not loaning money to someone else. Maddys decisions will carry repercussions for individuals that she needs to consider and not take lightly. She’ll be put in the position of choosing one business / individual over another. I think she’ll learn something about herself from this. (But perhaps I’m overly optomistic.)
My goals in doing this are:
- I believe in the Kiva mission and want to support them.
- I believe in my daughter and her sense of justice.
- I want my daughter to realize exacltly how privledged she is and respect those who are less fortunate.
- I want my daughter to feel the joy of successfully helping someone.
- I want my daughter to learn something of decision making and repercussions.
I’d encourage anyone who thinks this is a good idea to comment, do it themselves, or blog about / link to Kiva.org.
What a great idea.
I’m impressed because it works on so many levels. I’ve read of Kiva before and wondered how their system works. There are obviously many small businesses in the third world who could use microloans.
…You’ve inspired me. In the middle of this post I bought a $25 certificate for each of my three nephews. Thank you for this post.
Kiva reminds me of Grameen Bank. Though the technical aspect is different, the purpose is the same: helping people in third world countries step out of poverty.
It is also great to hear that your daughter is doing this, with you providing advice to her.
I hope you’ll do a follow up article about how Maddy made her selection and the process she went through.
I think Kiva is a wonderful organization, and will be making a “loan” myself.
great idea…..kiva is starting to scale as well and will grow rapidly.
another site P2P lending is http://www.globefunder.com, also focused on scaling capital to microentrepreneurs. Let’s help make more loans.
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