Red Hot Chili Peppers: Kiva Style

Had some lending fun on Kiva this morning.

Lately, it's been even more fun of since I have started to have some Kiva credit to work with.  This is money that has been refunded back to me after the people I lent it to have paid it back.  To date, that's already happened 5 times.  I still have one more to "recycle."  But now I have 4 -- what I have dubbed -- "second generation" loans... old money going to new people.  It's very exciting. 

It's alway fun to "connect" with one of your lendees... and that was the case this morning.  I was looking around and stumbled across I Wayan Landep from Indonesia (pictured left) who is hoping to plant a crop of hot peppers. 

Our love of hot and spicy food is fairly well-documented here at W&C... so it was perfect match to support a hot pepper farmer.  Knowing Todd would feel the same, I quickly e-mailed him about the loan.  He was able to get in on time (loans still get scooped up pretty quickly) and contribute to it as well... and using Kiva credit from one of his repaid/refunded loans!

Granted it is hard to always find that kind of connection, so another thing that I am doing is venturing into as many new countries as I can... to date, I have (or had!) loans in 21 different countries, some of which I hate to admit I wouldn't have been able to point out on a map prior to my Kiva loan (ok, some of them I likely still can't... c'mon Cameroon??!).

If you are interested but still hesitant to get involved with Kiva, a couple words of advice...

Contribute the minimum of $25 per loan... just like the puppies at the shelter, the loans will be funded... I doubt many last more than 24 hours.  Diversify!  I have two "delinquent" loans... on one of my first loans, I decided I wanted "full ownership"... honorable, but stupid... I should have "spread the wealth" and not have had so much tied up in one person.  Remember there are no guarantees that the loan will be paid back!   Which is a nice segue to...

Check out the "risk rating"... this is a relatively new feature and it will give you an idea of how reliably loans have been paid back (and likely factored into that is the "delinquency rate," which is also provided on each loan page).

Mix it up!   Look at the "repayment term"... if you just contribute to loans that are going to take 12+ months to be re-paid the wait to "recycle" the loan might get frustrating. I have many loans in the 3-6 months range that should keep my re-loaning pretty regular.