Habitually Good

The title has been lifted from Kiva website. Kiva is a place on the web which connects lenders from around the world to borrowers in the developing nations. What’s very good about the website is that it allows multiple lenders to lend to one borrower. So, you can begin lending with as little as $25. If a farmer in Africa needs a loan of $1000, it can be fulfilled by 40 people lending $25 each.

Kiva through its field operators tracks your loans and gets repayment back to you as the loan is repaid. When you visit the site you can see a list of borrowers in need of a loan (usually in the $500-$1500 range). You can read about their planned expenditure of the loan money. And then you can select which ones you want to lend to.

A dramatic way of putting it is like this: “The next time you go for buying a pair of jeans you don’t need right away, you can use the 50 bucks to help someone expand their grocery store or buy supplies for their farm”.

And all it takes is a PayPal account to do it.

The one feature of lending money that is lacking as of now is that there is no interest generated in this process and you get back the same amount that you lent. This is supposed to change in the future as Kiva works out the legalities in this. However, I would do it just for the feel good factor; the coming-together-to-make-the-world-a-better-place-for-everyone factor.

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