Zidisha Founder Julia Kurnia: Loans Incentivizing Achievement Rather than Dependency

February 28, 2016 @ 8:58 pm By Erin Hobey |

At age 22, recent George Washington University grad Julia Kurnia co-founded the world’s first microfinance organization built entirely from crowdfunding capital sourced over the internet, using funds raised from Kiva.org in Senegal, West Africa. She spent the next four years managing U.S. government grants to small businesses in… Read More

Read more in: Featured Headlines, Global, Investment Platforms and Marketplaces, Opinion | Tagged claire cain miller, craig newmark, fintech, jessica livingston, julia kurnia, kiva, microfinance, microloans, motherhood, p2p, parenting, paypal, peer to peer, tech, the world is flat, thomas friedman, usadf, women changing finance, women who tech, y combinator

Medical Care, Aided by the Crowd

April 13, 2013 @ 4:40 pm By NYTimes.com |

TWO years ago, Chase Adam, a Peace Corps volunteer in Costa Rica, was riding a bus through a town called Watsi, when a woman got on board asking for money. Her son, she said, needed medical attention and she couldn’t pay for it. As the… Read More

Read more in: Investment Platforms and Marketplaces | Tagged health care, medical, microloans, watsi

Kiva Touches One Million Lives Around the World With Crowdfunded Loans

March 18, 2013 @ 5:15 am By JD Alois |

Kiva, a crowdfunding platform for social good, announced today that it has reached over 1 million people in more than 65 countries through $400 million in microloans. This is a tremendous milestone for the nonprofit organization, which was founded in 2005 to connect people through… Read More

Read more in: Global, Investment Platforms and Marketplaces | Tagged charity, kiva, microloans, non profit, peer to peer