Kiva

About a year ago, a blog entry on the cartoon blog alerted me to the existence of Kiva, a sort of broker between micro finance organisations and individuals. I lent some money via their website. A few weeks ago, I saw a man in a restaurant wearing a Kiva T-shirt, so I accosted him and today, Rob and I went to his office here in Cambodia to find out more about how it works. He kindly spent 90 minutes answering our questions, and told us that it was nice to spend 90 minutes talking about how cool your job is, instead of spending 90 minutes actually writing reports.

He is a volunteer and is here in Cambodia for about five months, while Kiva set up working with a new partner, an institution called Angkor Mikroheranhvatho (Kampuchea) Co. Ltd. He works out of their offices, inputting data to Kiva, liaising between them and AMK, and doing some auditing and reporting to ensure that all is as transparent as it should be.

Anyway, I'm satisfied with all his answers, and thoroughly recommend that you go and check out www.kiva.org, and let them borrow a small amount of money off you.