Kiva

Have you heard of Kiva?

Kiva.org

Kiva is a ministry that connects people through lending teams to alleviate poverty by providing loans to entrepreneurs to help better their lives. It works in 5 different continents to provide loans to people without access to banks. 100% of the money goes directly to funding loans. Kiva is funded through donations, grants, corporate sponsors and foundations. I give $25 you give $25 and pretty soon the Kiva team from Woods Chapel has several hundred dollars to loan, but we are only in for a small amount each. Current repayment rate is 98.60%

Kiva partners with micro-institutions (Field Partners) who know the local area and do all of the legwork to find entrepreneurs to loan money. Field Partners review the loan requests and select who they will recommend to receive a loan. Once the Lending Team reviews the list and decides who will receive the funding, Kiva distributes funds to Field Partners who distributes the funds to the entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs pay the Field Partners principle + interest. Money goes back to Kiva to credit the lender. Lender has the choice of what to do with the money once it is paid back. They can either withdraw the money or recycle the money into another loan.

We can easily set up a “Lending Team”, people within the congregation willing to contribute to a Kiva fund. A list of pre-screened entrepreneurs is provided on their website and the WCC Lending Team would decide who they were going to lend the money. Once the person to receive the loan has been chosen the Lending Team will make a withdrawal using PayPal - and sent to Kiva – then the Field Partners – and finally to the entrepreneur. The Lending Team would meet monthly (or as often as the team decides) to track the progress of their loan(s). When the loan is repaid the Lending Team can recycle the money to a new entrepreneur.

One of the churches set up a world map and put red dots on each of the locations that their team had sent money. Their goal was 100 loans but now have over 200 loans.

Through this method the goal is to help the people help themselves to get out of poverty. Not to just give them the money, but to give them the start that they need to help themselves.

I would love to be a part of a micro-lending team at WCC. Is anyone else interested?

It's a beautiful day in God's world, be sure to see the good.