Understood. I just had no idea that people were taking their lives because of an inability to repay microfinance loans in general. I'm an active Kiva participant with a few thousand USD in the system at present.
Cool, I'm also a lender with some thousands in. Over-indebtedness is actually a topic we discuss nearly every other day there, though I'm over in engineering so not as involved, but it's apparent they are going to extra efforts to ensure borrowers are not over indebted.
That seems like a situation that is more directly influenced by the country-specific lending institutions, no? Aren't they the ones setting the interest rates, repayment terms, etc., not Kiva and other ML organisations?
Yes, but Kiva has very high level control over two factors
1) Who they lend with
2) Whether or not to continue lending with them.
All the partnerships with these MFIs has a clause in the contract where Kiva can pull out at any time if it finds the MFI is engaging in questionable practices.
They also do a surprising amount of research on which MFIs they work with. If the MFI doesn't pass a social impact assessment, then they don't make it past there.
I actually think Kiva does a better job of investigating MFIs than most VCs/angels do when investing in startups. It would make for a great blog post if I was able to divulge all the details :-/
Wow, I had never heard about this. I found an article about it in case anyone else is interested: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-11997571