Kiva.org co-founder visits CMU on Monday

I'm going to pull my 8th grade son out of school to hear this lecture at CMU.

The Heinz College's Institute for Social Innovation is pleased to welcome Jessica Jackley, co-founder of Kiva.org, the world's first peer-to-peer online microlending website, to Carnegie Mellon's campus on Monday, April 13 for a public lecture. Jessica will be speaking on microfinance and microlending, and her experiences with Kiva.org. If you have an interest in microfinance, international development or social innovation, this opportunity is not to be missed.

Monday, April 13, 2009
12 to 1:30 p.m.
Hamburg Hall room 1000
4800 Forbes Avenue, Carnegie Mellon's campus
Lunch will be served.

Please RSVP to social-innovation@andrew.cmu.edu

Jessica Jackley is a co-founder of Kiva.org, the world's first peer-to-peer online microlending website. Kiva lets internet users lend as little as $25 to specific developing world entrepreneurs, providing affordable capital to help them start or expand a small business. Kiva has been one of the fastest-growing social benefit websites in history, connecting hundreds of thousands of people through lending across over 150 countries.

Jessica first saw the power, beauty and dignity of microfinance while working in rural East Africa with microenterprise development nonprofit Village Enterprise Fund on impact evaluation and program development. Sector-agnostic about social change, Jessica has worked for public, nonprofit, and private organizations including the Stanford Center for Social Innovation, Amazon.com, Potentia Media, the International Foundation, World Vision and others.

Jessica's work with Kiva has been featured in a wide array of media and press including Oprah, the Today Show, CNN, BBC, NBC, ABC, PBS, NPR, the WSJ, NYTimes, the Economist and more. Jessica speaks widely on microfinance and social entrepreneurship, and serves as a director on several boards related to microenterprise development, including Opportunity International.

Jessica holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business with Certificates in Global Management and Public Management, and a BA in Philosophy and Political Science from Bucknell University.

Jessica is a trained yoga instructor, avid surfer and poet.

Erik's service project at our church, Sunnyhill.org, with his classmates in this year's "Coming of Age" program was a fundraiser for a Kiva.org account. They raised than $1,000 from our church with the help of a designated offering.

Erik also works with his middle school student government and they devoted some efforts to Kiva.org as well. The 'profits' from a dance went to Kiva.org.

The beauty of the Kiva.org efforts is that the funds are invested into various small business ventures (entrepreneurship) in the present. However, the funds are returned so that in the future, additional investments can be made by those to follow. So, other 8th graders at our church will be able to monitor what has happened and re-invest, if not re-double the efforts, in years to come. Same too with the International Studies students.

A few years ago, TalkShoe.com folks put together a 24-hour telethon of sorts to benefit Kiva.org. Erik and I co-hosted an hour of that show.

Our biggest introduction to micro-credits came with a former minister at our church, David Parke.