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A list of Kiva's current Field Partners can be found on our Partner pages: www.kiva.org/about/partners .

We are working hard to expand our partnerships to all regions across the globe at a pace that is healthy for both our current partners and for Kiva.org.

If we do not partner with an MFI in your area of interest, you can check out the Mix Market, which is a great website that collects data on microfinance institutions around the world. You may be able to find a microfinance institution in your area of interest on this site. Please refer to their website athttp://www.mixmarket.org.

Eventually Kiva.org would love to work with partners in the United States. However, for now, we are not currently facilitating loans in the U.S., as it is more complex legally to facilitate peer-to-peer lending in the United States. By focusing on lending in the developing world, more social good can be created for less money; it is cheaper to start a business in the developing world than in the developed world. Finally, please know that there is already an organization which facilitates peer-to-peer online lending in the US - check them out athttp://www.prosper.com.

Many poor families are financially unable to purchase a house that is fully built out to meet their needs.  And It takes a long time for low-income families to gather capital, meaning that basic housing improvements can take years to achieve.  Thus, microloans help families make improvements to their homes in stages.  For example, many Field Partners work with borrowers who need to protect their homes against severe weather conditions or secure their homes to make them safer.

Individuals receiving housing loans must go through an application process with a Kiva Field Partner to prove their ability to repay the loan, just like individuals receiving business loans.  In fact, many borrowers who receive housing loans are entrepreneurs who have previously worked with a Field Partner in accessing a business loan.

Kiva posts all available contact information for its field partners on our partner pages: www.kiva.org/about/partners/ . If you click on the name of a field partner, you will be taken to the partner's Profile Page where you will find its contact information.

Please note that many of the field partners that work with Kiva.org have limited access to the internet, may not speak English, and have a very small number of staff members. For these reasons, it may be difficult for a partner to respond to your inquiry.

Kiva and its field partners cannot facilitate direct communication between lenders and entrepreneurs at this time. Many entrepreneurs do not have access to the internet, they speak another language than you do, and Kiva's field partners do not have enough time to facilitate this kind of communication.

If you ever want to post a comment in response to a journal entry publicly on the Kiva website, please know that you can click "Post a Comment" under a journal entry. Kiva's field partner may see your comment, and possibly even share your words of encouragement with the entrepreneur.

Kiva and its field partners cannot facilitate visits at this time. If even a fraction of Kiva's lenders visited the entrepreneurs they support, our field partners would be swamped and unable to proceed with their primary function of working with entrepreneurs.

Kiva posts new loans on its website everyday, so if you don't see a loan that meets your criteria today, please check back again soon. Loans do move through the site quickly, as the average time it takes for a loan posted on Kiva's website to receive full funding is 1.2 days.

If you know of a microfinance institution (MFI) that fits Kiva's criteria, please contact the MFI directly and ask them to review our minimum criteria to ensure they are a good fit and, if so, to submit an MFI profile using our Become a Field Partner page.

Below are a few ways in which you can become involved with Kiva.

*Apply to join our Fellows Program.

*Become a Kiva lender and support entrepreneurs as they lift themselves out of poverty.

*Join Kiva as a volunteer translator. Visit our Get Involved section and scroll to the bottom of the page to learn more.

*Keep an eye out for future positions and volunteer opportunities with Kiva on our Get Involved section.

Group loans are a powerful innovation in microfinance, because they are often less expensive for partners to manage in terms of time and resources. In a group, microfinance institutions can leverage the local knowledge of individuals to select good borrowers; disburse many loans at once; collect repayments in a group; and more easily follow up on delinquent loans, as group members have an incentive to work with each other to ensure on-time repayment. By using these efficient aspects of group lending, microfinance institutions can issue more loans in smaller amounts to the poorest.

In a group loan, each member of the group receives an individual loan but is part of a group of individuals bound by a 'group guarantee' (sometimes called 'joint liability').  Under this arrangement, each member of the group supports one another and is responsible for paying back the loans of their fellow group members if someone is delinquent or defaults.