.. what an excellent idea!
kiva.org works on the basis of a free loan by a private lender to the very poor, who plan or have some business to develop, but would almost have no chance to lend from a normal bank. The website is personalizing the contact between the lender and the entrepreneur through information and images, and securing the path of the money by having NGOs working in micro financing sector as connecting partners in the receiving locations. One of the most important aspects which makes the idea work, might be this transparency based concept, which gives the lender the opportunity to understand a bit of the other side’s circumstances, and as well giving the poor a chance to make their needs and voice heard through the support of the NGOs working in the area.

Read more on it in this interview with Premal Shah on venturevoice or in this one with Jessica Flannery, another founding member, on worldchanging about kiva.org, the peer-to-peer mirco finance website:

Microcredit is not new. It’s been around in one form or another for hundreds of years. But in the Information Age, a San Francisco company has taken the idea of microfinance and upgraded it for the Web. Radio reporter Clark Boyd first reported about Kiva.org for Public Radio International’s news program The World. He now travels to Uganda for FRONTLINE / World, where the first recipients of money collected through Kiva’s Web sitebuilding and expanding businesses.

watch a videoare on how kiva.org works distributed by frontline

Kiva, which means “agreement” or “unity” in Swahili, would allow people with a little bit of extra cash to use their credit card or the online money transfer company, PayPal, to lend directly to African entrepreneurs. Kiva got its start a little more than a year ago in Uganda, where it forged partnerships with local microfinance institutes so that each business would be vetted and approved before being posted on the site. … (read on)