A Hand Up

Kiva is four years old today according to Susha Ireland. Like her I'm a fan: it's a neat mash of development aid meets micro-finance meets 'credit union 2.0'. It also has the virtue of cutting out the middle men (governments, aid organisations, NGOs, bureaucrats etc) and cutting to the chase of funding those who need the funding.

As William Easterly keeps reminding us at his excellent Aid Watch blog, there's an awful lot of 'aid' that isn't very helpful (or wise for that matter). His tongue-in-cheek post on If Hotels Were Aid Agencies gives you a sense of why initiatives like Kiva are much, much smarter.

The Green/FF Renewed Programme doesn't have much to say on overseas aid other than that:

We will set out clear targets showing how Ireland will meet its ODA commitments.

Targets are cheap, of course. Maybe a smarter approach is needed: why not let the citizens choose the recipients of aid? And if we adopt a Kiva model we'll get the money back again and we can support other recipients anew.

'Renewable Aid' - sounds like the sort of things Greens should support ...