Kiva

At the beginning of the semester, I went to a speaker about the Kiva Foundation has taken the campus by storm. The speaker was actually the founder of the organization, Jessica Jackley. She spoke about how the idea to start the Kiva foundation started. Kiva is an organization that is based on the idea of micro-lending. Micro-lending is when someone gives a small loan to to another (usually someone in a third world country) to start up a business. Once the reciever of the laon makes enough money to repay the loan, the loaner is repaid. The genius of the organization is that the small loan can be used over and over again, recycling loans and helping many people to better their lives. Kiva is a website that allows potential loaners to look at stories of people and choose who they want to loan money to. The money then goes through a micro lending company that works with the Kiva organization. The founder decided to start up this company with her husband after taking a trip to Africa and seeing the poverty that occurs in some of the poor areas. She thought that this poverty could be helped through helping to get people out of the cycle of taking out loans to buy materials. Then the person would make their product but not enough to pay for the materials they bought to make the product. Here is a link to the kiva website: www.kiva.org .

Kiva could have a huge impact in the school system. Classrooms could raise money to make a small loan and then follow the progress of the person they loaned the money to. It also could be used to learn about different cultures, depending on where the person recieving the loan. Schools could use the Kiva organization to teach about social issues and injustics as well. Using Kiva could be very beneficial in any classroom!