Communicable

I attended #mesh09 and decided to share some of my notes. My favourite was the keynote with Jessica Jackley, co-founder of Kiva.org.

Kiva Microfunds is an organization that allows people to lend money via the Internet to microfinance institutions in developing countries which in turn lend the money to small businesses.

- Jessica nominated as one of the top 100 most influential people of the year by the Times magazine

- Kiva is about stories. Poor people need something – Jessica tried to understand poverty since her childhood. Analyzed common approach nonprofits take: showing images of poverty that make donors feel pain, shaming people into donating money, so their guilt and pain go away. What is left is no human connection, just a deep heartbreaking sense of sadness that doesn’t go away.

- Kiva is about putting names and faces to poverty, establishing human connection based on respect, hope and empowerment. Inspired by Muhammad Yunus. He didn’t talk about the poor and their suffering to make people feel sad. He talked about smart, hardworking people who need investment to better their situation.

- Kiva now has 10,000 micro-finance institutions as partners all over the world. As of March 8, 2009, Kiva has distributed $63,010,010 in loans from 458,538 lenders. A total of 90,201 loans have been funded. The average loan size is $425.83. Its current repayment rate is 97.79%. Kiva’s website typically ranks well into the top 25,000 websites on the Internet, according to Wikipedia.

“If what turns you on is doing good for people, this is a remarkable time to be alive” – Jessica Jackley

Principles of success according to Kiva:
1. Know your mission. There will be times to make decisions and nothing will guide you better than your mission and your values. Kiva is about people lending to people, doesn’t incorporate organizations donating funds easily. Had to turn down millions of “social responsibility” investments from companies, because they have refused to turn the funds into gift certificates and have employees lend the money (connecting people to people)
2. Stay open. Kiva welcomes co-creation – bloggers all over the world co-create content for the site, upload videos, team of volunteer translators do the translation, web developers collaborate to build applications. Kivafriends.org, kivapedia, kivaTV, someone built an office in second life for Kiva. Kiva keeps its data open allowing to build APIs: build.kiva.org

3. Kiva is pro-radical transparency. When mistakes are made, kiva corrects the errors and takes full responsibility.

4. It is tough to find people and establish partnerships, to take time and make sure that the stories and people are real, goes back to who we are in the world. Kiva’s peer-to-peer lending connects people in a healthier, more positive way, out of care.

My two cents: here is an organization that managed to keep it human. We can all learn from that.

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