Kiva.org - loans that change lives

Today I made my first loan through Kiva.org, a fabulous online site that allows us to connect with and loan money to people and small businesses in developing countries. They've had so much press lately (I saw it on the Today Show last week) that they are limiting people to making $25 loans so everyone can have a chance to participate. I loaned $25 to Maria Teresa Rivera Rios, who lives in Nicaragua and needs to build a wall in front of her house to protect her store.

Kiva apparently manages to do this with very low overhead, by partnering with local groups to administer the loans. A very cost effective approach that is doing a lot of good. At this point, 8,421 new members have joined, it's taking only 4.3 hours to fully fund a business, 835 businesses have been funded, and $592,125.00 has been loaned. And that's just this week. And it's only Wednesday.