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"Give a guy a fish, and he'll have food for a day. Teach a man how to fish, and he'll have food for a lifetime." This is why I really love the Kiva model: ins
by radicalbyte 14y ago
"Give a guy a fish, and he'll have food for a day. Teach a man how to fish, and he'll have food for a lifetime."
This is why I really love the Kiva model: instead of giving money away, you instead become a 2nd/3rd world Angel Investor.
It also makes me think about Hans Rosling's excellent TED talk about population growth and globalization: http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_growth.html http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_g...
- crucialfelix 14y agoI keep a bunch of money in rotation on Kiva myself. But it's not angel investing, it's just small loans for very small businesses. If a decent sized business showed up on there then they wouldn't get sponsors I think because they would seem too well off. and actually angel investors or crowd funding for african tech entrpreneurs is a much needed thing right now.
- rhc2104 14y agoI'd like to plug Zidisha ( https://www.zidisha.org https://www.zidisha.org ) It's a lot like Kiva, except there's no MFI acting as a middleman. Thus, borrowers pay far lower interest rates. You see, borrowers of Kiva loans actually pay a lot in interest, with an average rate of about 35% - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiva_(organization)#Current_interest_rate_statistics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiva_(organization)#Current_int... . At Zidisha, borrowers pay as little as 5% in interest. Kiva has a pilot program inspired by Zidisha called Kiva Zip. Disclosure: I'm on the board.