Kiva conducts regular, ongoing monitoring of all Field Partners, but only posts status updates here in response to relevant, major changes at the partner.

Partner description:
 
Milaap (which means 'connecting people' in Hindi and Urdu) is a crowdfunding platform for social impact in India. Similar to Kiva, Milaap partners with proven, credible grass-root level organizations to identify deserving borrowers and the amount of financial assistance they need. The borrowers are published on the Milaap website and the profiles get funded by both individuals and organizations around the world. Milaap’s loans are facilitated through Milaap’s network of partner organizations.

Milaap was started with a vision to change people’s concept of giving and make it a personal, transparent and sustainable process. Milaap enables individuals all over the world to give a loan to the deserving working class of India – students, small businesses and families – who need a small amount of capital to get ahead and change their lives for the better.

Milaap's target population is borrowers who primarily live in rural or semi-rural settlements in India. The organization provides loans to people who are engaged in income-generating activity but do not have basic needs like water connections, home lighting, toilets, etc. By enabling access to loans designed to meet these needs, Milaap hopes to help low-income households increase their productivity, save on medical expenses and live healthier lives.

A unique lending approach:

Milaap facilitates lending in the areas of energy, education and training, enterprise development, sanitation and water. The organization seeks to fund loans that create permanent change in people’s lives by providing basic needs, job guaranteeing skills and working capital that helps small businesses grow.

Milaap’s loans are facilitated through local MFIs and social enterprises, and borrowers repay their loans to these Milaap partner organizations, in accordance with the established repayment schedule. Milaap does not require its partner organizations to report repayment information from individual borrowers, so they are unable to pass this information along to Kiva. Because of this, in the case of a borrower default, the Milaap local partner organization will cover the repayment of the loan to Kiva lenders, with the exception of large-scale defaults due to major events, such as natural disasters.