Just got into Kiva.org yesterday. I had seen it many times before, but really wanted to see the site pick up traction before I spent much time on it. Cut me some slack! There were so many silly web2.0 companies coming out that I could never keep up.
Luckily, Rod, from 5280Angel in Denver, posted about his Kiva loans being repayed, and his active portfolio page was really what drew me in. I took a quick look at the rest of the site, which is brilliantly done by the way, and then signed to help finance a few loans.
The next day I received this in the mail:
Dear XXXX,
This is an update on Tamales “Doña Amalia†written by Victor Paredes:
Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to Amalia RodrÃguez MartÃnez by Admic Nacional in Mexico. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the next 6 - 12 months, Admic Nacional will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.
Kiva very much appreciates your responses online. You can read and respond to this journal online at:
http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&action =comment&id=10833&ent=12312 Some of our partners choose to write their journal entries in the local language in order to keep their overhead low. If this journal entry is in a foreign language, please feel free to use an online translator such as Altavista’s Babelfish (http://babelfish.altavista.com).
Thanks!
– Kiva Staff
The rest of the money needed to match the loan must have been raised shortly after I contributed, so off it goes to the entrepreneur.
More to come on Kiva. I love the site, love the design, and really like the simple model (check out a great interview with the CEO here). Glad to see people out there are effectively applying the powers of web2.0 (and technology in general) to potentially help the world.
