I just made an educational microloan!
As someone with three kids in college, I'm used to the idea of educational loans. My kids are borrowing money; I'm borrowing money. It's the American way of higher education! Outside the U.S., educational loans are not so common. And, education is the way out of poverty. This weekend, I made my first educational microloan, to Claudia Belén García Royz of Nicaragua, who is studying to be an industrial engineer. This loan was the result of a conversation I had with Kushal Chakrabarti, the founder of the Vittana Foundation . Multiple people had connected me with Kushal, including my brother Tom, who worked at Amazon with Kushal. Kushal described Vittana as "Kiva for educational loans." It makes a lot of sense to me. I'm not alone. Every student so far that has posted a loan need has had willing lenders snap up the offering quickly (in under 30 hours over the weekend). Kushal's challenge is actually finding more microcredit institutions in the deve...