Monday, September 13, 2010

Where exactly are your Kiva micro loans going?

I love Kiva.org.  I love the idea of Kiva (micro lending) and the practice is so easy it makes me smile (and make regular loans).   In lieu of a Peet's cappuccino each day I can help a Peruvian woman buy a motorcycle to transport her family to the doctor, or to buy supplies to make clothes or to sell cosmetics, or to stock her grocery store.  I'm not sure why Peruvian women are such a lure for me, but they are.  And Nicaraguan women.  It's women.  I find myself wanting to help women in developing nations improve their lives.  Women in Central and South America.  Women in Africa.  Women the wold over.


These are the entrepreneurs that I sponsor: the Peruvian and the Nicaraguan women.  These are the women that I envision when making my loans.

I made my first Kiva loan in February 2009.  I think I heard about Kiva on NPR and was instantly hooked.  I loved the idea of direct assistance and assistance to women in particular.  Since then, I've made 10 loans, 3 to Nigerian women, 2 to Peruvian women, and 1 each to women in Nicaragua, Cambodia, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and the Philippines.  For some reason, I thought they were mostly Peruvian women but alas the data tells a different story.




Tonight I was wondering where Kiva sends its money and whether some countries are better than others at repaying their loans.  And, with the miraculous wizardry of Tableau I was able to quickly see that there is a correlation between place and delinquency, place and loans disbursed.  Mind you, I'm talking correlation and not causality.  I don't have enough data to say why Kenya is the greatest defaulter of loans with the US trailing as a close second, or why Tanzania, Nicaragua and Ghana have delinquency rates exceeding 50%, which are considerably greater than any other country with active loans, but I can quickly see these details and that tells me there's something to investigate.




So what did I learn?  Kiva makes lots of loans to Cambodia and Peru.  And those borrowers, they're good for it.  In fact, they're better than those in the US.  Uganda gets less money and is a bigger risk.    The countries who were the biggest risks got the least money.  So, Kiva is spending my money well.  I think.  But what can we do to help those with high delinquency or default rates?  It must be more than your country of origin that shapes your credit worthiness.  Or so I would hope.  What do you think?

Check out my data set and visualizations at http://public.tableausoftware.com/workbooks/Kiva_Org-MicrolendingRevealed  

3 comments:

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