Remember a while back when I tried to get you to join my Kiva team? Well you still can, but a story in today's New York Times reveals that the money may not be hand-delivered by trained monkeys riding rhinoeroses straight into the wilderlands as I had hoped!
More likely, it goes to a microfinancer, who then throws our money into a big pile that funds a bunch of people:
This is disheartening, because you to like to feel you're giving your $25 straight to Mr. Abubakari to help expand his grocery business, when you're really giving it to Sinapi Aba Trust, who, for all you know, might have given the cash to him six months ago, and now SAT has used your money for some other purpose altogether.
Ultimately, Kiva still appears on the level, and the funding you want to get done is still happening. It just appears to be less direct than the fiction we want to spin. I can live with that. Maybe you can too when you join the Quickstart group and we fund some other charitable microfinance group?
More likely, it goes to a microfinancer, who then throws our money into a big pile that funds a bunch of people:
Mr. Ogden goes so far as to question Kiva’s role in the lending process. “Kiva’s new documentation explains, if you read it, that Kiva is a connector not of individual lenders to individual donors, but of individual lenders to microfinance institutions,” he said. “If Kiva’s users want to be connected to an individual borrower, Kiva doesn’t do that, and so the big question is, do Kiva’s users want to be connected to a microfinance institution — in which case, why do they need Kiva?”
This is disheartening, because you to like to feel you're giving your $25 straight to Mr. Abubakari to help expand his grocery business, when you're really giving it to Sinapi Aba Trust, who, for all you know, might have given the cash to him six months ago, and now SAT has used your money for some other purpose altogether.
Ultimately, Kiva still appears on the level, and the funding you want to get done is still happening. It just appears to be less direct than the fiction we want to spin. I can live with that. Maybe you can too when you join the Quickstart group and we fund some other charitable microfinance group?
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