Kiva Update: They're Pretty Legit!

I just received an email from Kiva Fellow Maia Pelleg today because one of my loans is to a man in Ghana.

In what I would call a thorough and open email, Maia let me (along with all the other Ghana lenders) know that the field partner there, Sinapi Aba Trust, was not quite doing its job. While they were trying very hard to maintain their loans correctly, their lack of organization had caused a number of loans to be duplicated. In addition, some loan amounts and terms of the loans on the Kiva website were incorrect.

Maia went on to apologize for these malfunctions and took full responsibility for their correction. She claims that she is working with SAT to bring them back up to Kiva code, ensuring that everyone who needs loans are getting them, and that we in the States are going to get the right information as to the status of our loans.

While I cannot by any means prove that Maia's work is going according to plan, I can say that I am proud that the people at Kiva are fessing up to their mistakes, taking full responsibility for them, and trying their best to amend them. When I listened to a "Stuff You Should Know" podcast about microlending, I remembered hearing horror stories of some small microloaning institutions acting just as cruelly and in a self-serving manner as the biggest of banks. That's just not right, and that's not what microlending is about.

Kiva, it seems, is trying to stay on the right side of the microlending aisle, and for that, I'm sticking with them.