Zidisha
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| Founded | October 2009 |
|---|---|
| Type | 501(c)(3) Nonprofit |
| Focus | Economic development |
| Location | |
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Area served
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Global |
| Method | Microcredit |
| Website | http://www.zidisha.org |
Zidisha is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that allows people to lend small amounts of money directly to entrepreneurs in developing countries. It is the first peer-to-peer microlending service to link borrowers and lenders across international borders without a local microfinance institution intermediary. The organization is named after the Swahili word zidisha (pronounced [zi.ɗi.ʃɑ]), which means "grow" or "expand".
The Zidisha website facilitates microlending transactions between individual web users worldwide and computer-literate, low-income entrepreneurs in developing countries. Users can fund loans, which borrowers use to develop businesses that improve their families' incomes. Borrowers can share business updates and communicate with lenders as they repay loans.
Zidisha was founded in October 2009 by Julia Kurnia.
After visiting Niger as Portfolio Analyst for the US African Development Foundation, Kurnia became disillusioned with foreign aid. In 2006, she co-founded the Senegal Ecovillage Microfinance (SEM) Fund with John Fay and Nan Guslander. To keep financing and salary costs low, SEM raised money from the online microlending portal Kiva at 0% interest, and its three co-founders all went without salaries and volunteered their time.
SEM struggled with the sustainability of their model, as they were unwilling to raise interest rates to cover the cost of renting an office and hire loan officers and also unable to find outside donors. Eventually Kurnia left in August 2009, and SEM began to struggle with delinquent loans, with its portfolio reaching a high of 77.4% delinquency in December, 2010. In response, SEM's team stopped making new loans and focused on collecting funds from their existing borrowers. Kurnia had donated $30k to subsidize SEM's operating costs, but once those donated funds and others ran out, the organization defaulted on 5.1% of its loans and Kiva closed its partnership with SEM in March 2012.
Kurnia's experience at SEM gave her visibility into the high operational costs of traditional microlenders. By 2008, Internet access in developing nations had become widely available enough to make direct peer-to-peer microlending feasible. Kurnia founded Zidisha to connect lenders and borrowers directly, thereby reducing borrower costs.
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