Editor’s note: If you missed this morning’s post, we took a look at some of the hottest eco-friendly Vancouver fashion designers and where you can find them in the Comox Valley. Check it out HERE. Now, Anthony Edwards takes us away from consumerism to a form of global lending that serves as a bridge between business and philanthropy.

Last week I threw in $50 with a bunch of other people to complete a $750 loan to Tuy Saveoun and her family in Cambodia. They supply vegetables to the local market, and will use the money to buy a cow to help till their small plot of land.

I’m quite certain they’ll repay my $50 over the next year, and hope they can generate a little more income for their family, perhaps buy some books or tuition for their school-aged children.

It’s a relatively simple investment for me. But, the implications of a handful of $50 investments to small business owners in developing countries around the world is enormous.

When Muhammad Yunus loaned $27 to a few families in Bangladesh in the early seventies, I don’t think he imagined how the digital age might one day allow his vision to spread through the West.

The 2006 Nobel Peace Prize recipient and driving force behind the enormously successful Grameen Bank, Yunus is a pioneer in the field of microcredit. For more than three decade, he has aimed is to provide very small business loans to those who live way under the radar of the established banking system.

The ability of micro-credit to lift families out of poverty has been well-documented. The Grameen Bank has more than seven million borrowers, the vast majority of whom are women.

Get to know Lina Limo, a 38-year-old mother of six at her bread store in Lelboinet, Kenya. Lina has been using microloans from Kiva partner KADET to buy greater inventory for her business selling bread, snacks, and other food items to students at a local boys high school and you can look at her KIVA profile HERE.

With over 2000 branches KIVA provides services in just about every corner of the world. They have a repayment rate that is the envy of most Western banks, whose own lending practices are often nothing short of immoral, and even 30 years ago were the very catalyst for Grameen’s birth.

Fast forward to today, marry this vision with the internet, and you and I can now provide direct ‘foreign aid’ from our own computer or wireless device, thanks in large part to an organization which supplies thousands of such loans across the world every day.

KIVA is a non-profit organization that has kick-started a microcredit revolution. It allows anyone to lend as little as $25 via the internet to fund small businesses in developing countries throughout the world.

Four years after launching with a few tiny loans to seven Ugandan entrepreneurs, KIVA has brought together over half a million lenders to provide more than $100 million to those looking for a hand, not a handout.

Meet Sophea Chum, a 23-year-old Cambodian Weaver who got a KIVA loan to purchase materials for her business. Her profile is HERE.

More than 250,000 beneficiaries from Azerbaijan to Mongolia to Zambia now have a way to access capital to afford a little more cloth for a sewing business, or new tools for a mason, or the means to get ahead in pretty much any other small enterprise that you could possibly imagine. A KIVA loan is like a bridge between business and philanthropy.

The process works like this:

• Lenders get to choose a specific business profiled on the KIVA website and make a loan using their credit card and the services of PayPal
• KIVA forwards funds to the microfinance institution they partner with in the loan recipient’s home country.
• Over time (normally 6-12 months), the partner organization collects repayments and provides updates about the borrower’s business on the KIVA website
• Funds are returned to the lender after the loan is repaid, and one can choose to withdraw from the program or re-lend.

KIVA sends 100% of loans to borrowers; at present their expenses are funded entirely by donations and grants. PayPal provides free processing of transactions, and a who’s who of internet technology pioneers are providing various degrees of support that keep KIVA’s expenses to a minimum. Indeed, KIVA has backing from the deepest of pockets, and I’ll wager that their future success will be off the charts.

The KIVA site is rich in information about their own operations, details about the borrowers’ businesses, and background on the partners who administer these loans in the destination country. Such an awesome approach to helping lift the less-advantaged out of poverty.

Check out some  of the incredible stories of entrepreneurs from around the world receiving KIVA loans HERE.

Investing through micro-lending brings so much personal meaning to your dollars and where they go. You get to know the person on the other end. You see how your contribution helps to better people’s lives in a tangible, personal way and it makes sense.

The return – a healthier world.

Other sites of related interest…
www.globalgiving.com
www.womenforwomen.org
www.care.org
www.globalgrassroots.org
www.grameen-info.org

Photography provided through a FLICKR creative commons license for Hodag