Here is a suggestion to get SCHOOLS INVOLVED

[Guest]

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[phisquared]

This has probably already come up but if not...here it goes!

Problem: Only a person can have multiple loans under their account.  This makes a one to many the only possiblity.

Suggestion:  Can the lending pages/process be changed a bit.   Instead of multi loans to one person.  Can there be single loans to one person (class) that are all contained under a single person (school).

Example:  The xyz school has one Kiva account.   The A,B, and C classes have put in $25 per class into the xyz school account under the A, B, and C sub account.  Now class A connects to the web site and picks a borrower and chooses their $25 from their sub account of the xyz school....then they lend.

Potential:  It would not take much discussion to get 1 class to afford $25, now the problem is to get xyz school to setup and maintain the master account....which should not be that much of a problem.  So, money collection is the easy part!  This would allow many schools the ability to get on Kiva.   For $1 per child (assuming 25 kids per class), and at least 20 classes per school, and with at least 1% of all schools getting in on this....huge!  Plus, this might be a good thing for the schools to learn about lending and borrowing.

If you kiva folks don't understand then please let me know.  I think the potential is huge.

Thanks,
PHI Squared

[AccountAbility]

Hello, PHI Squared.  Welcome to Kiva Friends.  First off, we are a bunch of Kiva Friends totally independent of Kiva itself.  Kiva staff do visit here from time to time and encourage the discussion.

As to your suggestion, I think most of us understand it. There is a thread here where various teachers and classes have been interacting with ideas to use in the classroom.  There is even a kiva-kids.org, a separate website run by folks who are encouraging school participation.

In the meantime, you will find a lot of good ideas here just waiting for the small staff and limited resouces of Kiva to work on.  Sometimes you will even find useful workarounds.

Dan