Doing good worldwide

  • Hap­pened across this story via Yahoo news, and I pass it along because it seems like a really good oppor­tu­nity to use the inter­net for a godly pur­pose for once: allow­ing the cit­i­zens of the “wealthy” nations to directly help bet­ter the lot of the cit­i­zens of “poor” nations. I can’t call it alms­giv­ing exactly: you’re extend­ing a loan of as lit­tle as $25, and have a 95% chance of hav­ing it paid back. So you prob­a­bly wouldn’t lose what­ever money you put into it — you would just allow the benef­i­cence that God has given to do some good some­where in the world for a time. It sounds like some­thing I want to try.

    Bot­tom line: a mar­ried cou­ple plus one sales­guy have started Kiva, which allows ordi­nary peo­ple to par­tic­i­pate in micro-finance in the poorer nations of the world for as lit­tle as $25. So you might par­tic­i­pate in loan­ing a total of $850 to some­one in Nairobi who wants to open a shop. He keeps a jour­nal and tells you how the money is spent. He also pays back the loan.

    The video at the above link has a good brief syn­op­sis. Here’s another one from PBS’ Frontline:



    So is there a down side? Well, I don’t think it’s out of line for one of the com­menters on the Yahoo page to men­tion that Kiva must take some part of the loan for their costs. Dis­crim­i­nat­ing do-gooders might want to inves­ti­gate just how much goes back to them, but given the large num­ber of loans they’re over­see­ing, I wouldn’t think we’re talk­ing about more than pen­nies on the dol­lar. Per­son­ally, I wouldn’t begrudge them that.

    Of a lit­tle more con­cern is another commenter’s opin­ion that those receiv­ing the loans would prob­a­bly even­tu­ally learn how to scam the sys­tem. Unfor­tu­nately, I think he might be right about that. All the more rea­son, I sup­pose, why I’d rather get involved now, when this is a new idea enacted by a small orga­ni­za­tion. My prob­lem with the Red Cross, Feed the Chil­dren and other huge phil­an­thropic orga­ni­za­tions is that pol­i­tics both in the orga­ni­za­tion and in the coun­try of the intended ben­e­fi­cia­ries can mar the good the dona­tions might do. I hate being a cynic, but that’s just the way it seems to go. Once the Red Cross got to be enor­mous, part of their efforts had to go toward sus­tain­ing the Red Cross. And once the tin-pot dic­ta­tor of Banana-Republic-Land fig­ures out that mil­lions are com­ing from these orga­ni­za­tions, he’s not going to let them in with­out tak­ing the lion’s share. It’s an ugly world that way.

    Any­way, Kiva sounds like some­thing a cut above. I’ll report back how it goes.


    Related posts:

    1. N-C-C ya later!
    2. After Kat­rina
    3. What makes kids happy — an afterthought
    4. “We will break up the cross …”
    5. Sto­ries you won’t see in the NYT

    August 25th, 2007 | Grace | No Comments |

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