eBay Employees Loan $450k to Kiva Entrepreneurs
Company completes the second year of its five-year partnership between the eBay Foundation and Kiva
The eBay Foundation provides every eBay employee with an annual $25 Kiva loan credit to create economic opportunity for small and micro entrepreneurs around the world. Since 2017, over 23,000 Kiva entrepreneurs have benefitted from more than $600,000 in loans made by eBay employees.
With an average of five people per household in developing countries, where many of these loans are made, the number of family members indirectly impacted to date through this program is over 92,000.
“Our partnership with Kiva is an example of economic empowerment in action,” said Dan Tarman, eBay’s Chief Communications Officer and chair of the eBay Foundation board of directors. “I’m encouraged that collectively we’ve lent overa half million dollars, and I’m inspired by the benefit we continue to provide to entrepreneurs worldwide.”
eBay’s 2018 Kiva campaign marked the second year of a five-year partnership between the eBay Foundation and the international nonprofit. To date, about 10,000 eBay employees have participated in the program to support small business owners like Elena from Peru, who used her $500 Kiva loan to buy fabrics for her store in Lima, and Enrique, a cobbler in the U.S., who used his $5,000 Kiva loan as working capital for his New York shoe repair business.
Kiva envisions a world where all people hold the power to create opportunity for themselves and others. The partnership is a perfect fit for eBay, a company founded on the principle that people are basically good, and that the Internet can be an empowering force that helps create opportunities for all people.
The program with Kiva not only advances the eBay Foundation’s mission to unleash the power of entrepreneurship to build economically vibrant and sustainable communities, it creates a direct people-to-people connection where real impact can be seen and felt by eBay’s employees.
“We all have the power to make big changes in people’s lives all over the world,” said Tarman. “That spirit is strong across eBay, and it’s one of the things that makes this company special.”
