Kiva uses crowdfunded microloans as a force for good, creating a space where people can have a one-to-one impact, and together, expand financial access for all. The community has funded over $1.6 billion in loans.
Our organization is a platform where lenders can connect with small-scale entrepreneurs and provide them with small loans. In order to connect with these borrowers, lenders need to be able to read their loan requests or loan profiles. It happens through the collective power of about 380 volunteers worldwide. We use an in-house web platform to queue up these loans and make them available to volunteer editors and translators all over the world. At any time, a volunteer can log onto the platform and grab a loan at random.
Volunteering - the giving of time and support, without expectation of payment, for the good of others, a community or an organization – may bring about benefits to health and wellbeing. Formal volunteering may be considered as part of a social prescription to which link workers may refer patients. This paper explores the role that volunteering may play as part of social prescribing by considering the impact it can have on health and well-being and highlighting factors that workers may need to consider when connecting patients to volunteering opportunities.
The expression of civic ideas. With more than seventy percent of Americans online, virtual micro-communities, or niche web portals, have made it easier for people to deliberately seek out and sustain relationships with those who share similar interests, opinions, and backgrounds.2 Citizens can pick and choose both the online destination where they want to share and the preferred format to communicate their opinions, whether through a blog, video, podcast, or tweet.
