Kiva.org is a San Francisco based non-profit organization that allow users from all over the world support those in poverty via Micro-financing.
There is a beautiful simplicity with lending through Kiva that encourages lending.
- Lend as little as $25
- Register using your Facebook profile
- Send money via Paypal
- Can’t decide who to lend to? Use the “Choose for me” feature that will randomly select a borrower for you.
To date, Kiva has over 1 million registered users, and has lent more than $260,000,000 to the worlds poor.
Borrowers can be searched by location / sector/ gender, and generally there is little risk of loans not being paid back (current repayment rate is 98.93%).
Loaning through Micro-finance differs from charity donations in that the money should eventually be returned to the lender, making it easy to fund further loans.