A10 Alan Garcia

In collaborative problem solving “people rise to difficult challenges to help others, often through remarkable innovations and adaptations of their own abilities and resources to meet needs.” This has been apparent in the collaboration enabled by Kiva.org for identifying capital investors that fund micro-finance institutions for support rural entrepreneurs in different parts of the world. With an accessible system for profiling past and future micro-finance opportunities this group has demonstrated that use of technology has improved collaboration among micro-entrepreneurs, lenders, and the supporters of Kiva.org.

Kiva.org is setup in a similar fashion to other networking sites but it focuses on providing micro-entrepreneurs around the world access to support networks that can potentially fund their ventures. Once a loan is made, the Kiva.org provides detailed profiling of payment amounts and dates for each micro-entrepreneur. This helps them gather startup costs, and legitimizes their cause as they garner more support and reputation from different lenders. They also link the entrepreneur to resources that provide training and management that would not otherwise be available for them. Once the loan is repaid and the benefits are visible, the lenders are encouraged to reuse their money for supporting other entrepreneurs.

The fundraising possibilities enabled by this model of lending even alleviates people in emergency situations. Vieweg discusses an emergent form of on-line participation that is identified as fitting into the stage of remedy. Kiva.com's technology provides lenders the networking and technology to approach entrepreneurs in emergency situations where other accessible remedies were not always available. The organization, awareness, and networking provides access to a the information that reaches a variety avenues of potential support support that will enable many more micro-entrepreneurs to be successful.