Networking con fines sociales

Uno de mis primeros posts fue dedicado a presentar el proyecto Kiva:

Anyone willing to lend as little as $25 — perhaps to Peter Muchiri, a furniture maker in Kenya who needs carpentry materials, or Roza Boguckaya of Tajikistan, who wants to expand her bakery — does so through the site, where they can also track the entrepreneur's progress as they repay their loans, typically over a one-year period.

Here's how Kiva — which means "unity" in Swahili — works: Lenders visit Kiva's Web site to find entrepreneurs from developing countries looking for a small loan. Kiva posts the entrepreneurs' funding needs and pictures online with the help of 38 local microfinance institutions around the world.

Ahora el Poverty News Blog nos cuenta que el emprendimiento está creciendo fuertemente gracias a los contactos y buenos oficios de sus fundadores:

It's a remarkably simple system that highlights the power of online communities. Yet just as remarkable is how adeptly Kiva has harnessed the collectivepower of the Silicon Valley tech community.

Among the growing number of companies providing Kiva with free services are Google, PayPal, Microsoft and MySpace. And more outfits want in, including San Francisco startups Automattic, which produces blogging software, and Xanga, a host of online diaries and journals.

(...)

Kiva's deal with San Bruno-based YouTube is nearly as unique. While most startups would kill for real estate beside YouTube's wildly popular online videos, Shah says that YouTube co-founder Steve Chen personally reached out to Kiva late last year. "Steve and I are old pals; he said, 'We'd love to help you.'" Today, YouTube shows banner ads for Kiva 40 million times a month and accounts for 15 percent of the nonprofit's traffic.