Kiva Microlending: A Little Loan Goes a Long Way

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Komlan Semenou's furniture shop in Togo benefits from small loans arranged by Kiva.org.
Komlan Semenou's furniture shop in Togo benefits from small loans arranged by Kiva.org.
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Thuan Nguyen Thi's Vietnamese market stand benefits from small loans arranged by Kiva.org.
Thuan Nguyen Thi's Vietnamese market stand benefits from small loans arranged by Kiva.org.

Learn about Kiva microlending. Kiva.org allows individuals to help entreprenuers in the developing world overcome poverty through micro-loans.

Kiva Microlending

When Muhammad Yunus, a Bangladeshi economics professor and the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner, started his experiment of loaning tiny sums of money to impoverished villagers in 1976, he set in motion a new financial industry known as micro-lending.

It was the plight of a villager named Sufia Begum that inspired Yunus to launch what would become the Grameen Bank, which was founded on the principle that small amounts of capital can enable the poor to lift themselves out of poverty. Begum was a 21-year-old mother of three who supported her family by weaving strips of bamboo into stools. The bamboo was purchased with a loan from a middleman, and at the end of the day, she had to sell the finished stool back to him to repay the loan. Her profit for one day’s hard labor? Two cents!

  • Published on Oct 1, 2007
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