Kiva Anniversary

Today marks four years since I joined Kiva.org, yay! I was on two other microcredit platforms before, but they failed while Kiva figured out how to thrive.

Fun stats about my portfolio:

• I've made 21 loans to people in 21 of Kiva's 81 countries
• Starting with my 3rd loan, I only loan to women who are mothers or students. From what I could find, those seem to have the greatest long-term impact
• 18 people have joined Kiva because of my invitation (you can here)
• I only lost a few cents and it was due to a bad currency exchange on my 2nd and 12th loan (literally less than $0.10 lost on over $500 lent!)
• I started two teams GitLab Community (6 members & 7 loans) and Neo4j (5 members & 9 loans)
• I started an account for my two-year old son so that the savings for his college fund will help educate others, too

What's really neat is the impact! Here are three of the messages I got back from Kiva:

Amina in Nigeria

"Amina no longer has to worry about having inadequate income to feed her family and children... Through [the] loan she will have ... double the national average [crop yield] in Nigeria. This will see her increase her income considerably. This season Amina has ambitious plans to harvest 35 bags of maize." - https://www.kiva.org/updates/loan/684684

Dile in Albania

"Dile replaced the stolen milk cow thanks to your help. Now she is requesting your help again, this time requesting a loan to build a stable." - https://www.kiva.org/lend/612887

Basma in Jordan

"Basma is married and a mother of 7. Her husband is a retired man who currently works as a driver. She has been selling home products for 1 year. She started... by selling small amounts of products. Now she needs to buy a larger quantity of home products to raise her profit and income; this will help her husband in covering their children's needs. She doesn't have enough money to do so, which is why she has applied for this loan." - https://www.kiva.org/lend/616524

It's pretty cool to see that I can help $25 at a time. I think everyone should try it out, and you can start here.