Digital Entrepreneurial Charity and Solidarity for Social Change: KIVA and the “Social-on-Linezation” of Poverty

Introduction

The nascent field of microcredit is growing rapidly and attracting increased attention from many sectors. There is something inherently interesting and appealing about microfinance and increasingly new stories as KIVA. These extraordinary people, who started helping others after the seminal work carried out by the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus, came up with brilliant ideas, and against all the odds, succeed at creating new products and services that dramatically improved people’s lives.

KIVA can be defined as a social change based a new entrepreneurial movement. This is why not only we have analyzed as a background the principles of microfinance as a way for alleviating poverty, but also for impulsing social change derived:

• 1.

  From a financial approach and the banking of poverty;

• 2.

  From an increasingly used Digital Space and its Internet-based Peer-to-Peer Micro-lending;

• 3.

  From an Entrepreneurial approach;

• 4.

  From Organizational dynamics; and

• 5.

  From Virtuous Approach.

As a result, and by means of this in-depth study, it has allowed us to focus on Kiva.org or the Social-on-Linezation of poverty.

Does KIVA experience and success can be applied to other NGOs? What is the impact of ICT on microfinance? What are the advantages using Joint Liability Lending? In order to answer these questions, the objective of this chapter is to analyze how the strategy and the good results obtained in KIVA can serve as learning from practice to other NGOs pursuing similar objectives. To do this, the chapter begins describing the theoretical background that exists on this issue. Then the model of KIVA’s loan cycle will be described to analyze the impact of the digital space through this case study. Finally, future research directions and conclusions will be added.