I’ve been loaning through Kiva for – wow, feels good – 3 years now. I started out with I think about $50 bucks and somehow, that’s gone up to almost 3-4 times as much without realizing it or even feeling a pinch (we’ve since become single-income).

I just have two experiences I really think stand out for me. One is the day I saw a $25 limit for people to lend. The note said that they’d had so many people willing to be lenders that they were imposing a limit so more people could lend. That warmed my heart – that people were lending so much!!!!

And the second was my own reaction, one that I confess to being proud of. Out of the loans I made, 2 defaulted. I got partial payment back to the extent they paid back, proportional to my amount. But what saddened me was how the borrower was coping. I mean – it was seriously a drop in the bucket to me. I think, combined, I lost less than 20 bucks. But to them – they lost so much more. They lost some credit rating, and more importantly – the chance to make their dream into something they wanted.

I love loaning through Kiva. It’s so small for me …. and so huge for someone else. I firmly believe that you never loan, you give. You give it and if it comes back, good for you, but you’ve loaned it not expecting it to come back. I only look forward to the loan being repaid because I can then re-loan and it means the person got their dream …. I have yet to take the money repaid and push it back into my checking account. It’s gone back to Kiva.

It feels good ….. that’s all i can say