USA loans

[Guest]

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[JohnAtKiva]

What happened to Grameen America? Loans at the end of April, and nothing since.

They don't appear to be posting right now.  But there are ten total loans, and they appear to be repaying on time. :-)

John

[iampaul]

They don't appear to be posting right now.  But there are ten total loans, and they appear to be repaying on time. :-)

Clarification: the entrepreneurs appear to be paying on time. For the past three months repayments to Kiva lenders from Grameen America have been delinquent.

Paul

[Peter S]

Thanks for sharing, Peter.  I'll share this with our Partnerships team immediately.

John

Thanks John.  Look forward to hearing further.

As I mentioned in my post, I have absolutely no issue with Darnell himself, and applaud his success.  I do wonder if this image of him from an April 2011 feature on young entrepreneurs to watch out for had been used in the loan writeup, it would have resulted in the same rapid funding of the loan.

[Diane R]

An article appeared in the San Jose Mercury News this past weekend entitled, "Microlending takes off in the Bay Area; small businesses reap the rewards."  You may need to sign up for a free registration to view it, I'm not sure, but it's worth a read.

The article focused on Opportunity Fund and mentioned Kiva involvement in microloans in the USA.  One of the entrepreneurs profiled (including in a number of the photos with the article) was Georgia whose Kiva loan was funded in June 2010 for her salon/art venue in San Francisco, Pretty Pretty Collective.

--Diane.

[Peter S]

Just wondering about Kiva Detroit, and the wider Kiva City initiative that was announced at the end of June.

There haven't been any new Detroit loans since the 5 that went up on the site on June 29th.  They still today constitute all ACCION USA loans to Detroit borrowers.

What scale of lending is anticipated, I wonder.   

. . .

6 months later, just two loans have been added, and the 7 Kiva Detroit loans total only $21,700.

Since the Knight Foundation  "provided a generous donation of $250,000 to support a Matching Loan Fund to double the impact of Kiva Detroit loans", (see http://www.kiva.org/detroit ) seems like there's a lot of money going to waste here.

On the Knight Foundation page about the "Kiva for Small Business in Detroit" initiative, there's mention of $250,000 granted to the Miami Foundation Inc "To engage Detroiters as community leaders by empowering them to use Kiva to champion the success of local businesses".   Not clear to me whether this $250,000 is the same $250,000 for matching loans mentioned on the Kiva/detroit page, and not clear either why this Detroit money has been granted to a charity operating in Miami.