Giving With Kiva

This past Christmas my brother and his wife gave my husband Jason and me a microloan gift to help global entrepreneurs on Kiva.org. If you’re not familiar with what Kiva is, here’s what they say on their website. “Kiva empowers individuals to lend to an entrepreneur across the globe. By combining microfinance with the internet, Kiva is creating a global community of people connected through lending.”

Today I chose someone to lend the microloan gift to and I must say, it felt a little like playing God. Sort of how it feels when I am at the pound choosing a cat or dog to save and invite into my rescue. Ok, maybe not as extreme, but still.

I started my search for the right candidate to lend to by filtering out the men. As a woman who understands how difficult the business world can be, I wanted to lend to a woman. I was also interested in lending to a woman in Palestine, my father’s country. Jason had previously made his microloan gift to a Palestinian man looking to build his computer business.

I have to tell you that after reading the bios of the five or so Palestinian women who were seeking loans, I was not impressed. They were looking to raise money for their husbands’ business, not their own. What’s more, where there should be a photo of the woman, is a photo of their husband with a note that says she is conservative and does not want her picture on the Internet. I respect that she may not want her face plastered all over the web, but I’m not down with the third world, old school, sexist divide that appears evident in request for the loans from the woman for the man. In the end, I was disappointed that I couldn’t help out a woman from my father’s country.

I wound up choosing Kokoe Homefa Messan from Togo, a little West African country near Nigeria, where I was born. And like me, she is married with one child. Her work involves buying second-hand clothing to sell in an open-air market. If you didn’t already know this fun fact about me, I am a huge fan of flea markets and of buying from consignment shops.

In the end, supporting Koke’s used clothing business didn’t just feel good, it felt right.

Koke Homefa Messan sells second-hand clothing in the market of Lomé in Togo.

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Have you given with Kiva and were you also in pursuit of a connection with the person you wanted to lend to?