I’ve been wanting to give Kiva a try for a long time and the trip to Peru was encouragement enough. I issued a few loans when we got back and was very impressed. Its great that as a microcredit service you get to choose who the money goes to and you receive the money back for reissue on loan completion. This gives more long term involvement with lending than many other lend-and-forget microloan services.
I recently decided to use some of my unused 0% interest free credit limit to increase my Kiva lending. While slightly risky there seemed little justification for not going trying it out. The money could be much better used by people that need a loan, than by sitting unused on my credit card statement. I chose loans which would be repaid in less than 6 months and only loaned $25 per per person to spread the risk of any delinquent payments.
Follow the progress of my loans and consider lending yourself.
It seems appropriate to find out about a virtual festival through a friend on Facebook who I’ve never met. This lead to a shared experience with hundreds of other festival-goers who never get to meet each other.