Partnership's goal: help moms worldwide build business, home

Moms helping moms grow a business, build a home, raise a family.

Those are the goals behind a partnership announced this week between Salt Lake-based TodaysMama.com and Kiva.org, a San Francisco-based person-to-person micro-lending Web site.

"With technology and the way the world is progressing, you don't have to be Bono or Bill Gates to make a difference," said TodaysMama.com co-founder Rachael Herrscher. "From my computer at home in Salt Lake City, I can grab all these people and help change a life."

The unique partnership focuses on connecting working mothers and entrepreneurial women in America and the developing world, according to Kiva spokeswoman Fiona Ramsey. By clicking on the "give" icon on the TodaysMama.com Web site, Internet users zip directly to the Kiva.org site, where they can read about women who have received loans and how they're progressing, as well as those who have applied for loans and how they propose to use the money.

"We have seen that lending to women has a large effect on society, on the family," Ramsey said. "Women really invest in their children, and the money they make from their businesses — we see that they spend it on education, and on improving the home for their family. And that, obviously, is a great thing, to improve lives."

Herrscher said TodaysMama was drawn to Kiva because it offered a personal connection — lenders learn about and receive updates from the people to whom they extend loans — and because Kiva assures that 100 percent of loan funds reach the micro-entrepreneur, rather than going toward overhead or other expenses.

"Every dollar goes to the person that you choose," Herrscher said. "You know exactly how they're using it. That's important."

The loans are not guaranteed, Ramsey said, so if the borrower defaults on a loan, the lender is generally out of luck. But Kiva.org says its repayment rate so far is 100 percent. The 501(c)(3) was founded in October 2005.

"The industry average is 96 percent, and we expect to reflect that average over time," Ramsey said. "But overall, the risk of default is very low."

TodaysMama has extended 20 loans to women in developing countries since November, and already Herrscher said one woman has made a payment on her loan: Yen Louv, a mother of five daughters and one son in Cambodia, who requested a $1,000 loan to buy two motorcycles.