As you may know, we are actively involved with Kiva, a microloan nonprofit that is fighting global poverty by assisting connecting lenders with borrowers who own small businesses in poor areas. Our 44th Kiva microloan to a small business owner in a developing nation takes us to Indonesia, where Beatrix manages a vegetable stand at a local food market. Beatrix is a married working mom with five kids and her income helps support her children’s high school and college expenses. With her loan, which was funded by us and 20 other Kiva lenders from around the world, she will be buying corn and rice in bulk to add to improve her business.

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Since 2007, we have been a part of Kiva, a non-profit that matches microloan lenders with borrowers who are small business entrepreneurs. The vast majority of Kiva borrowers are from developing countries and the success of their businesses positively affects their local economies and helps to lift them and their families out of poverty. Lenders can lend as little as $25, and as the loan is paid, the lender receives his or her money back and can either take it out or relend it to another borrower.

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Even though it looks like we will not make our goal of helping to fund 45 small business entrepreneurs in developing countries through Kiva, we are proud to say that we made it to 42! One of our first loans of 2012, to help Julio grow his family bakery business in Peru, has been paid in full, so we have relended the money to Merlinda, who sells fruit in the Philippines:

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As participants in microloans through Kiva, we have a goal to help fund loans for 45 entrepreneurs in developing countries by the end of the year.

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With loan numbers 35, 36 and 37, we’re on our way to meeting our goal of helping to fund 45 loans by the end of the year to small business entrepreneurs in developing areas through Kiva, a microlending non-profit organization.

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We’re proud to continue our microlending relationship with Kiva this year, helping to fight global poverty by assisting small business owners with their entrepreneurial initiatives. We have a goal of reaching 45 total loans by the end of the year.

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In 2011, we were able to fund six entrepreneurs from developing countries through the microlending site Kiva, bringing our total number of loans to 32! Three of our 32 borrowers — Nelva, David and Reina — recently paid off their loans (although because of “currency exchange loss”, meaning the value of the dollar appreciated 20% or more against the currency of our borrower’s country during the loan payoff time, David’s loan was considered to be 99% paid off when all was said and done). Since we choose to relend our money once it becomes available again, we had enough to pick two more borrowers from opposite sides of the globe:

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We’ve reached a sort of milestone with our four-year Kiva experience. Drum roll… 30 loans! For those of you unfamiliar with Kiva, it’s a non-profit organization that helps people to participate in microloans (usually $25 per lender) to small business owners who typically live in developing countries (and Kiva now allows loans to American entrepreneurs as well). Your $25 gets pooled with lenders from all over the world to fund a loan that can be hundreds or thousands of dollars. {For more about Kiva, visit www.kiva.org and for more of our experiences with Kiva, check out our previous blog posts.}

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Since our entrance into the world of business ownership in 2007, we have been helping other small business owners with microloans through Kiva. [Read more about our experiences with Kiva]

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We’re starting off our participation in microlending this year with loans to two entreprenuers in very different parts of the developing world. As the owners of a small business ourselves, this is one of the ways we help other small business owners and a way to take an active role in the fight against global poverty, a cause that’s important to us.

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