Lending to the poorest

[Guest]

.

[wannado]

In addition to lending through Kiva, I've been looking for ways to finance loans to the poorest of the poor--loans too small to be efficiently processed through Kiva.  I recently found this wonderful opportunity through Microplace.

https://www.microplace.com/investments/details/A+High+Impact+Investment+via+Oikocredit+GC+Note

The average loan size is $21, and the loans go to extremely poor borrowers in Cambodia, Haiti, India, Indonesia, Philippines, and Viet Nam--mostly women, and many in rural areas.  The chance to lend to people like this is what attracted me to microfinance in the first place.

I like the personal connection that Kiva offers with borrowers, and that's what keeps me lending.  But I really LOVE the ability to help the very poor that this Microplace investment offers.

Marsha

[RichardF]

Yes, on the Kiva - MicroPlace topic here, one post shows the various ways current listings can be filtered.  Here's a list of the social investment filters.

MicroPlace - Find Investments

Social - (numbers are as of today)

Level of poverty
Poor (11) | Very poor (32) | Extremely poor (32)

Green (1)

Serves rural areas (43)

Focus on women (30)

Fair trade (1)

The MP Glossary describes how it determines poverty level filters.

Level of poverty
While all microfinance borrowers are poor by definition, this is an approximation of the level of poverty of the borrowers receiving your investment. It is difficult to measure actual poverty levels so we use average loan size as a proxy (because poorer people generally take out smaller loans). We then use a World Bank measure called purchasing power parity (PPP) to adjust for country differences.


--
Poverty Level¹ = (average loan size) * (PPP adjustment) 

--

Extremely Poor = up to $1,000 

Very Poor = $1,000 - $2,500 

Poor = more than $2,500.
--
When you direct your money to a multiple organization investment focusing on poverty, the poverty level is a weighted average of all the organizations.
--
--
¹ Defined by Calvert Foundation