Kiva Group

Yeah I love Kiva. Its far and away the best charity system ever devised in my humble little opinion.

I think it's a great charity. I've already received some money back from loans I made thanks to the generosity of Casino Listings.

hope777 wrote:

I haven't received any of the money back. Do you receive it all at once? I can't wait to get mine back so I can re-gift, plus I need to order another 25 dollars soon. 🙂

No, they pay it back in increments. I don't have enough to reinvest yet. I just ordered two more Kiva cards. 🙂

Yes the funds come back slowly. One tip is that when you are lending you can sort the borrowers by repayment term. This puts the borrowers planning to pay it back the quickest at the top of the list. It also helps if you make several loans at once as the repayments accumulate over the months and you can be re-lending quicker. I usually get enough back every month to re-lend to at least one new borrower - in fact yesterday I received over $100 back which was great (I started with $500 last year sometime).

Thanks for the tips CL-Ed. When I first loaned money, I thought I would start getting it back in a year. I think the re-payment terms were a year. I was surprised to find money put back into my account. I usually loan on my intuition. 🙂 I will have to look at the re-payment terms again. It would be nice to re-loan some out each month.

I looked into my account today and I have received several payments back. I have over $65.00 to re-lend!

hope777 wrote:

That is awesome! I am still doing one at a time, but I think I might purchase another soon. I always have such difficulty choosing someone out of all those people, but wow, what a great place/idea.

I have a hard time using too and usually just use my intuition. Recently there were people from the U.S. asking for loans.

I will give you a Kiva loan Hope. Go apply. 🙂 I have $65.00 to loan!

Well, I'm not sure, but you never know. 🙂

yep.. they paid me back, slowly but surely! 😉

Some have paid back fully, others slowly, but that is because of the length of repayment I chose. Glad to see you back Ubetcha!

Yes each loan has a repayment term but I have seen that people often pay the money back much quicker than you were expecting. It's best to get a few separate $25 loans going at the same time because then you can accumulate the $25 in repayments you need to re-lend quicker. I still love that site!

And yes I have seen people from the USA on there. I may be a bit biased but I figured that the poorest people in the USA still have it a lot better than the poorest in Africa or elsewhere, so I didn't read their stories.

CL-Ed wrote:

And yes I have seen people from the USA on there. I may be a bit biased but I figured that the poorest people in the USA still have it a lot better than the poorest in Africa or elsewhere, so I didn't read their stories.

I agree that even the poorest people in the U.S. still have it better than those in other countries. I still read their stories though. I haven't loaned to anyone in the U.S. yet though. Kiva is a great place.

I will go there right now and check out the loan. I've been meaning to do it, but get easily sidetracked.

They are also still offering sponsored free trials so if you have an account, go there and log in and you can get a link to give to your friends. Each one who signs up gets a free $25 to loan.

I put that on my FB CL-Ed. I have another site or two where I can post it also.

I let my husband joined on Kiva. He has some inquiries that apparently these poor people have to pay higher interest from where they are members of a group or whoever coop & organization have sponsored them to get the loan. 😢

It does give me a second thought. What do you think..??

I don't know what interest rate they pay. I think it would be worse not to be able to get a loan at all. Let us know what you find out.

I guess that it is Kiva's responsibility to properly vet the field partners to ensure they are operating ethically. The idea of this "micro-finance" is to get money to people who would not normally be able to borrow it so from that point of view I agree - better to give someone a chance.

It's as high as 23% and then if they default up to 28% plus they will also remit an annual dues to whoever group they are affiliated with.

Read more on this forum:

http://scam.com/showthread.php?t=76720

I do believe, not all groups do this kind of inhumanity. How would we know that we lend it to the most vulnerable people with no string attached. Yes, it's Kiva's responsibility but my conscience said otherwise..

I think if you read all of that page you linked to you would see the original poster's argument was thoroughly debunked.

Kiva has a page where it explains the interest rates the borrowers pay. From what I can understand after reading it, there are fixed costs associated with loaning people money, so the smaller the loan the larger the interest rate appears to be as the field partner that administers the loan needs to recover their costs. And looking at a number like 23% in isolation tells you nothing - the local country could have 20% inflation, or local lenders may be charging 45% interest normally.

But thanks for pointing it out - I learned more about the process and after doing the reading I am comfortable that they are doing the right thing and the borrowers are not being taken advantage of.

very well, you're welcome.. that completely explains it. Many thanks!