Kiva - Jewish Lending Group

Kiva's mission is to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty. Kiva is the world's first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs around the globe. Kiva has partners with existing expert microfinance institutions, which has helped them gain access to outstanding entrepreneurs around the world.

Kiva's partners deal with the day-to-day issues involved with microfinancing and the full financing is done as a team effort - you can lend in as little as $25 USD per entrepreneur or group and other Kiva members pitch in the rest. Please be aware that Kiva provides INTEREST-FREE LOANS - you are not giving your money to these entrepreneurs. While there are always potential extenuating circumstances, our experience with Kiva's entrepreneurs has been very positive - we have had no defaulted loans in the close to 3 years we have been lending and several paid back in full.

JewishinDC.com created the Jewish Lending Group on Kiva.org at the beginning 2009. We have been asked why is this group necessary and to answer that, we will provide quotes by two Jewish intellectuals:

• "The greatest level [of donation], is to support a fellow by endowing him with a gift or loan, or entering into a partnership with him, or finding employment for him, in order to strengthen his hand until he need no longer be dependent upon others." - Maimonides' Eight Levels of Charity
• "If we donate [or lend] only to Jewish causes or to individual Jews in need, we may stop seeing everyone as being equally created in God's image and therefore worthy of our help. After all, we are all members of one race, the human race." -- Rabbi Joseph Telushkin

Please join us in our quest to make the world a better place. By lending with Kiva, you are truly making a difference in somebody's life. And by lending them the money, rather than giving it to them, these entrepreneurs are learning to help themselves - a much more gratifying endevour than simply receiving a handout.

To join the Kiva.org and the Jewish Lending Group, please click here.