
Creator of Facebook Ads is matching P2P microloans at Zidisha (YC W14) - jkurnia
http://p2p-microlending-blog.zidisha.org/2014/02/02/our-first-matching-loan-fund-launches-in-beta/
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orijing
"Creator of Facebook Ads" is quite the title

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supercoder
what a visionary

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detcader
Aren't microloans like, disastrous when push comes to shove? Can't find the
specific article but..

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jkurnia
Hi detcader,

That is a really good question for debate. You may see my views on it here:
[http://www.quora.com/Microfinance/Do-the-micro-loans-
contrib...](http://www.quora.com/Microfinance/Do-the-micro-loans-contribute-
to-the-well-being-of-the-people-or-do-they-leave-them-even-poorer-due-to-high-
interest-rates)

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citricsquid
Most of the people that I have loaned to through Kiva are people with a very
low standard of living (relative to the west) which means they do not have
access to computers and without the Kiva field partners they would not have
been able to obtain a loan. Does Zidisha do anything to address this? The
interest rates that Kiva field partners charge aren't great (and it's great to
see an offering that goes a long way to solving that problem, along with
allowing loan forgiveness!) but they seem to be a necessary evil, as they
support the expense of helping people who don't have the ability to request a
loan directly.

For example, can I use Zidisha to support people like Salamatu:
[http://www.kiva.org/lend/625549](http://www.kiva.org/lend/625549), or is
Zidisha something I should use alongside Kiva to help the more fortunate
borrowers?

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jkurnia
The assumption that poverty = lack of access to the internet was pretty
generally true until about five years ago.

Today, the generation just entering the working population in developing
countries still live on pretty meager incomes, but unlike their parents, are
commonly on Facebook and able to participate in an online community without
any intermediation from local organizations.

Most Zidisha borrowers are young adults living on about a dollar a day in the
urban slums of Africa and Asia. They often have high school degrees and many
are enrolled in university, but they live in sheet-metal shacks in muddy
streets lined with sewage. They help support their families by searching for
low-pay day labor or selling small inventories of low-value items. They
usually access our website via public cybercafes (the price to browse the
internet in Nairobi is just about ten cents).

So to answer your question, to support Salamatu herself you would probably
need to lend through Kiva or another local organization. But if Salamatu has
children, they may well be raising their own microloans through Zidisha
someday.

Here is a story about one of our members who operates a cybercafe in Nairobi,
which gives a pretty good idea of how young adults in developing countries are
going online: [http://p2p-microlending-blog.zidisha.org/2013/06/12/life-
wil...](http://p2p-microlending-blog.zidisha.org/2013/06/12/life-will-never-
be-the-same/)

