I donate money to various charities and causes and do use microlending too, but it's not something that I end up talking about with my friends, so they're probably not aware that I do it. Maybe that's the case with your friends too. I probably look like I "don't care about the poor" because I usually don't give money to random people asking me to support causes (like at events or stores) if I'm not familiar with the cause because I prefer to research where my money goes before giving it.
No in my case I've had these conversations and they've always dismissed them. Even my girlfriend who liked the idea hasn't bothered with something like Kiva while she's asked for an invite and I've sent her a few and told her several times, and she's done years of community service and studied international development. Somehow a lot of people dismiss participating outright despite saying it's awesome and saying it's cool I'm doing it and appreciate why Kiva's model, and some willing people seem not to be able to be bothered.
I'm not much different by the way. I've been participating in Kiva for quite a while and donate monthly to doctors without borders since I was a teenager, but despite being interested in the topic of development, I am barely motivated to learn the nitty gritty and get more deeply involved. I'm only barely beyond the point of superficiality to be honest.
Hope you'll talk to your friends about it, too!
As for not giving to random things at events, I don't either. Effective giving is extremely important. Here's some great talks to start with if anyone's interested:
For a quick bit of context, here's a very rough example. A guide dog for a blind person typically costs upwards of $20k for raising, training (both the dog and the blind person) etc. This improves the quality of life of a blind person considerably. Alternatively, we can spend about $30 per person to operate on people's eyes who are effectively blind due to a vitamin deficit and allow them to see again. This literally restores their vision. The latter is almost two orders of magnitude cheaper meaning you can help that many more people with every dollar spent.
That's one of the most extreme examples of why effective giving matters.
Has Kiva gotten better about choosing their lending partner organizations? It was big news a few years ago that Kiva was partnering with in-country lenders charging extortionate interest rates.
Kiva is a great idea in concept. They just need to take a firm stance against corrupt lending practices, especially since they present themselves as a charity and so no middleman should really be profiting incommensurately in the process.
I'm not too up to date, I should do some more reading. Without having researched this thoroughly, I can say this though:
The first link you posted shows some 'portfolio yields' (pretty much interest+fees, which can kind of be summarized as interest rates anyway) of up to say 80% in South Sudan for 2012.
But that's not as crazy as you may think. After all, South Sudan has an 80% inflation rate in 2012, meaning the two are cancelled out.
This may not be true for every year, for every partner, for every country, but inflation rates of 20% are pretty average and typical for a lot of developing countries. Accompanying interest rates of 20% may sound ridiculous to us, but it's not considering all prices and income in nominal terms rise by 20% per year, too, making the ability to pay off your loan similar to if income/prices and interest rates were 0 throughout the year.
The second link you posted is hyperbolic bullshit (like microfinance producing 'zero impact on a good day' or irrelevant facts that are clear ad hominem attacks, like how the founders have 'newly minted MBAs', which we all know has become the international and universal sign of 'inexperienced privileged rich people without a clue' and just a cheap shot. He doesn't for example mention he himself is writing the article with a 'freshly minted MBA', because he indeed has an MBA himself)
David Roodman has written a great book, but any nuance it may have had is completely thrown out the window by the writer of the article. For a more substantial view read the following article for example (which is far from unbiased by the way, as Grameen was the genesis of modern microfinance, but it struck me as fair)
It continues about a crisis in Andra Pradesh, a region my girlfriend just came back from, on suicides related to microfinance. There's no link to Kiva at all, therefore it's thrown out there just to defame Kiva, it merely proves that not all lenders are good lenders, which isn't news. Loansharks have existed for thousands of years.
In India specifically I can recommend the documentary nero's guests. It's been a long-term problem even before microfinance took off and has caused hundreds of thousands of suicides in the past decades. It's tragic, but simply not indicative of Kiva. It's an illustration of globalization's need to compete with factory farms, requiring large investments in land and fertilizers, and a single drought can ruin 10 years of profits, and Indian farmers with no social security, no welfare, no pension, no savings, no insurance, they have zero opportunity to recover from that. That's horrible, but I hope it's clear the solution isn't to not allow any financing of any farmers. The solution is not to stop programmes like Kiva. These problems are unrelated.
It then talks about things like cockfighting loans on Kiva. There was one and promptly pulled, the lenders were refunded. Again, no substance, just an article trying to attack Kiva.
Then it mentions child labor, that's actually not on Kiva as child labor is illegal by international legal standards and Kiva abides by such standards. But it's an interesting discussion. A friend is traveling to Bolivia next month to report on child labor laws there, as it has just legalized the practice. I'd be happy to have a larger discussion on this, but as crazy as it may sound, I'm not of the opinion that child labor should be illegal everywhere. Yes, in a perfect world, child labor should be illegal. It oughtn't be dismissed so easily, here's a quick overview, some comments might be good reading, too, one from a former child laborer himself:
Then it attacks Kiva for keeping $88m in the bank in order to raise money from interests by investing that money. It's just utter bs. You can read about it here:
Anyway I can go on and on, but it's quite clear that Kiva is not the 'scam' that he literally calls it without nuance. I'm not championing Kiva as the perfect solution to all problems. It's just a tiny NGO that does some good work by lending a relatively tiny $50m a year worldwide.
