The Six Lessons of Kiva

Hope I don't seem to overhype Kiva on this blog--but I really love the organization as an example of an individual (in this case a couple) making a tremendous difference in the lives of many people in the world...

Stanford Magazine has a terrific article about Kiva called “Small Change, Big Payoff” by Cynthia Haven. This is the story of how Matt and Jessica Jackely Flannery created it to enable people to make micro loans to entrepreneurs around the world.

The results are awesome: more than 123,000 people have loaned more than $12.4 million to 18,000 entrepreneurs. In fact, there so many lenders that there’s are individual limits so that everyone can make a loan.
(..)

Here are some lessons that any entrepreneur can learn from the Kiva phenomenon: