BACK in June 2007, Arab News first introduced its readers to Kiva (www.kiva.org). Kiva is an amazing online effort through which individuals around the world offer micro-financing to the working poor. The loans are used to help the poor in 44 countries fund entrepreneurial activities so they can improve their lives. Unlike charitable donations, the money given out through Kiva is actually returned to its lenders in tiny amounts each month. Within a year, the loan will be paid back and the Kiva lender can either take the money back or loan it again.
With a crisis gripping global economies, it might be imagined that Kiva would be having a hard time offering loans, but that’s not the case at all. In February 2009, the shortest month of the year, Kiva raised more loan money than ever before. Through Kiva, individuals all over the world sent three and a half million dollars in microfinance to entrepreneurs in need. It was an amazing feat and shows that the premise of Kiva is sound. Now 41 months old, Kiva has raised $62,696,435 in microfinance from individuals with a 97.78 percent repayment rate. A total of 145,139 entrepreneurs have been funded though 457,405 Kiva lenders. Women are particularly empowered through Kiva, with 77.93 percent of all loans going to them.
Kiva empowers individuals to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs in the developing world. Lenders select which loans they want to finance. Complete loan descriptions are provided at www.kiva.org. Loan candidates are pre-screened by Kiva’s field partners and they help to monitor the loans. Loans may be financed by a single lender, but more often, the risk is spread by many lenders loaning amounts as little as $25 to achieve a larger loan sum.
Kiva is now aiming to offer an even richer online experience to the Kiva community. To do this, Kiva has created an application programming interface (API) and is asking that application developers around the world lend a hand.
Through the API, anyone with a bit of software savvy can help Kiva create new applications, tools and features for the Kiva lending community. The Kiva API is completely open and no developer registration is required to use it. Just go to http://build.kiva.org/ and learn more about it.
Over the next few months Kiva plans to turn Build.Kiva into a hub for builders, mashers and other creative types looking to make a difference in the world. Through Build.Kiva developers will find news, discussion and documentation around the Kiva API and other tools are provided to help developers be creative. Build.Kiva also connects developers with each other so they can share ideas and keep up with activity going on in the developer community. So do something good today -— write some code to help alleviate poverty.
