Kiva – give the world’s poor a leg up

By Kay McMahon, 10 January 2009

If you’re living in a developing country, particularly if it’s a Least Developed Country or LDC, the chances are that you’ve heard of microcredit and the success it’s having in lifting people out of poverty.

For those who haven’t, the basic idea behind microcredit is that very poor people – who normally wouldn’t qualify for a bank loan – are able to borrow small amounts of money at affordable rates for business proposals designed to help them make a living. The microcredit schemes are typically administered with the participation of the community, to vet the proposals and ensure that the money lent stands the most chance of making a positive difference.

We’ve just heard about the Kiva scheme, which enables people worldwide to participate as microcreditors personally. You can choose who you want to lend to, from individual project proposals all over the developing world.

This sounds like such an excellent idea that we’ve started a BritishExpat.com team to help support Kiva.

You can find out more about Kiva on their website: http://www.kiva.org/

And if you’d like to join the BE team, you’ll find us here: http://www.kiva.org/team/britishexpatcom