Jantaloans is a website from the Janta Foundation that facilitates microloans and scholarships to help poor students from all over the world finance their education. Through this website, people can find profiles of students and invest in them by lending at least $25.
Users can lend money to poor by sending money through a Paypal or credit card transaction. Jantaloans then sends the funds to their field partners once the full amount needed has been raised. After a period of time, the website tracks the academic progress of the students and loan repayments while updating users who have invested in them.
The small amount that you loan can go a long way to help these students. Jantaloans sends a powerful message that anyone can help, even from your computer desk.
Features:
- Help poor students from around the world through microloans.
- View profiles of the students.
- Know the field partner organization.
- 100% of the loaned money goes directly to the student (unless a minor).
- Track the academic progress of students.
- Similar Tool: Kiva
Check out Jantaloans @ www.jantaloans.org
Hide 3 Comments
I am not sure I trust this particular initiative.
Looking at their description (jantaloans.org/what) I see that my “gifts†do not go to the students but to subsidizing the website or the interest for the loans. This is not yet too bad, although I feel it is not explained plainly enough.
Where I beg to differ is here “They recover their costs by charging market-based [...] interest rates for microloansâ€. And this is just wrong. Interest rates must cover the risks (0% here – I take the risks), the RoI (none, its NGOs we’re talking about) and operational costs. To say that you charge market based interest rates is to say that costs for operating and NGO are much higher than operating a bank in all relevant countries.
I do not want to be the bad guy here. If I am wrong, someone please correct me.