>> ^GenjiKilpatrick:
why should i care about this?
..seriously


It'll make you a bigger man and put hairs on your chest

Kiva is amazing.

And it is a much more productive and radical concept than mere food dumps on third world countries and block grants to NGOs.

Choggie hates microfinance because of the potentially large interest rates and his undying pledge of support to World Bank/IMF.

One thing I found particularly disturbing in this program was the crippling spiral of debt that has driven many Indian farmers to commit suicide. Exposure to the international economy - and the protectionist policies of many Western countries - has led to a decline in the value of traditional crops like cotton. Coupled with the cost of buying tractors, fertilisers and irrigation pumps, this has left many farmers in a desperate situation. Without help from the government they are forced to turn to traditional money lenders who charge extortionate rates of interest on their loans. A similar situation used to exist in Bangladesh, but the pioneering work of Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank has helped to lift many people out of the shackles of poverty and debt. The Grameen Bank offers microfinance services to its customers, providing low interest loans - often to women - which are collateral free. Inspired by the success of the Grameen Bank, there are a number of NGOs now offering similar services. Furthermore, there has been a recent increase in the number of Islamic NGOs offering Islamic microfinance services. These Islamic NGOs conform to the Islamic prohibition on interest (ribaa). They offer interest and collateral free loans on a profit and loss sharing basis (mudaaraba). If a profit is made the bank will take a predetermined share of the profits. However, if there has been a loss - for example, their crops may have failed - as long as the customer has not been negligent, the bank will bear the financial loss. The banks also offer special loans (qard hasan) to the poorest customers in which only the principal sum must be returned.

Mohammad Yunus is the father of MicroCredit. Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia-

"Microcredit is the extension of very small loans to the unemployed, to poor entrepreneurs and to others living in poverty who are not bankable. These individuals lack collateral, steady employment and a verifiable credit history and therefore cannot meet even the most minimum qualifications to gain access to traditional credit. Microcredit is a part of microfinance, which is the provision of financial services to the very poor; apart from loans, it includes savings, microinsurance and other financial innovations.