PADT makes 100th Microloan through Kiva over 10 years

Today PADT hit a bit of a milestone, we gave out our 100th microloan over the past 10 years, to a guy named Roger Yester who makes adobe bricks in Peru.  Microloans are small loans, created by pooling bite-sized amounts of money from many people, given to individuals or small groups to help them with their business. It may be to buy raw materials to fulfil an order, as is the case with our 100th loan, or to buy inventory for a small store they operate out of stall in the local village.  The movement started as an alternative to high interest rate loans from predatory lenders and has grown as a way to fund people all over the world from every economic level.

We put $1000 into Kiva back in June of 2007, ten years ago.  (I like round numbers).  We added another $500 a few years later and have been reinvesting that same capital over and over again since.  This re-use of funds has lead to $7,900 lent across 100 loans. We have only had two defaults and have donated $935 to Kiva to cover overhead during that time.

The loans have gone to 50 different types of enterprises, mostly agricultural. We have helped buy breeding pigs and chickens in several countries, funded a new motorcycle for a taxi service in Cambodia, and backed a furniture maker in Mongolia.  Over the years PADT’s investments have supported 5 different beauty salons in Vietnam, Tanzania, Nigeria, Peru, and Jordan.  Our most common investment is in clothing sales with 8 different entrepreneurs backed for that industry.

We have even given loans to help families send their daughters to secondary school.

You can see some of our key loans and more statistics at:www.kiva.org/lender/padtinc.

If you think this sounds like something you, your family, or your company might like to do, sign up through this link and they add $25 to our loan pool when you make your first loan: www.kiva.org/lender/padtinc.