Critical Thoughts

If we take a look what happened in the past few years, we realize that many people can’t handle debt. In the US many people bought houses on credit and while the real estate gained overwhelmingly in worth, nobody thought about repaying or what would happen to the growing amount of debt. Right… a crisis in the housing market was inevitable which partially led to the financial crisis of 2008.

Now, how can we expect people from Low-Income-Countries without much educational background and knowledge about banking to use their debt efficiently if we are not able to do so ourselves?

My first lending experience

Following the last post, I decided to support Chuk Seab, the fisherman from Cambodia.

Look at his kiva page by clicking HERE.

It is interesting to notice that Microfinance is flourishing in Cambodia. By the end of 2004 there were 450,000 borrowers engaged through Microfinance institutions. More information you can find at the Banking With The Poor network(BWPT).

Introducing Entrepreneurs

Today I will introduce projects and entrepreneurs that I might lend to next week. In order to find lending possibilities, I go on kiva account and click on lend. There I can sort all projects that are available for support due to status, gender, sector and region. I choose 4 business ideas and present them to you in the following, please help me to select one!

Loans that change lives!

YES, I did regsiter at kiva as I promised, but I did not pay for anything yet! Sorry…

First of all, let’s look at how it feels like to be a future lender! Well, It’s more than easy to register and as soon as you submit you can see projects that are offered for you to support!

But, let’s not forget that if we want to look critically at something, we have to find out what we are committing to! Important to notice:

• You are not guaranteed to get your funds back!
• Kiva is not an investment opportunity!

Microfinance!

Actually, this Blog was supposed to be about people and what they do, but I found it more interesting to write a Blog about Microfinance. Well, it’s still about people and what they do!

Why tell about it, if everybody can find information about it on the web?

Well, I want to make myself the test object, meaning, I will create my own account on kiva.org and become a lender. On that way we can all together figure out how everything goes. Also, I would like to create a platform for discussions about the idea of Microfinance.