Nextbillion.net: Kiva vs. MicroPlace - What's the Difference?

While both online platforms respond to the microfinance industry’s need for debt financing and desire for globally minded do-gooders to help alleviate poverty, their approaches are different. Kiva was created by newlyweds Matt and Jessica Flannery. Inspired by a 3-month trip to East Africa, they created a way for average people, with a thirst to make a difference, to lend to microentrepreneurs around the world. “The real motivation behind Kiva was to blur boundaries between who we think of as wealthy and who we think of as people in poverty,” says Matt. MicroPlace founder Tracey Pettengill Turner returned from a stint with Grameen Bank in Bangladesh with a dream to create opportunities for socially-minded people to invest in the power of microfinance to reduce poverty. Leveraging her experience as a social entrepreneur and business executive, Tracey established MicroPlace, an online platform for retail microfinance investments. “We want people to open their investment wallets, not their charity wallets,” explains Tracey, who believes this strategy accesses a much larger

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Contributor: Carmen Villegas Caballero
Published Date: April 25, 2008