Of all the rich media streams I subscribe to it took an afternoon coffee in front of Oprah to learn about this extraordinary website.

In the spirit of Nobel Prize winner Muhammah Yunus, Kiva.org is

the world’s first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs in the developing world.

Illustrating what can happen when you empower the givers as well as the receivers, Kiva has loaned nearly $US35 million (to date) to entrepreneurs across the developing world, from over 300,000 individual lenders. They partner with micro-finance lenders around the world to provide small business loans of an average of about $500. They currently boast a better than 98% payback rate. Of course the other beautiful aspect of it is that the “givers” are actually “lenders” who once their original investment is repaid, are free to lend it again to another recipient.

I’m stunned by the simplicity this concept, and how obvious its success seems now that I know about it. They are aggregating supply and demand at a truly granular level; matching the extraordinarily successful micro-finance concept to the powerful desire of individuals to give and see their giving make a difference. Distributed philanthropy perhaps? There is no doubt that the experience of selecting an individual person to sponsor and then following their progress is highly rewarding and motivating force.

I must explore further….