February 26, 2009 | Read Time: 1 minute
Kiva uses the Internet to match entrepreneurs in developing countries with people who want to lend them money to build their businesses. Now the San Francisco charity is asking programmers to develop new online tools to further promote its microfinance mission.
The group has created an open-application programming interface — API for short — through which computer programmers can request public data about Kiva’s work.
Those data are then delivered with “computer-friendly markup” that makes it easy to integrate the information into new software applications.
Among the possible projects: Tools that would allow people to find or monitor loans on their cellphones or other mobile devices, an alert service that would notify potential lenders when a certain kind of loan opportunity becomes available on the site, or a map that tracks the transfer of funds through Kiva around the world.
For technology to fulfill its promise in bolstering the spread of microfinance “is going to take a lot of innovation, a lot of creativity, and a lot of passionate people bringing the opportunity of loans to places they’ve never been,” Skylar Woodward, head of the developer program, writes on Build.Kiva, the group’s new API Web site.
“Because we believe in the power of you as a part of this open and transparent community, we are opening our digital doors today and asking you to help us change the world with loans,” he writes.
Kiva is keeping a running list of ideas for tools that programmers could develop using the new programming interface.
For more information: Go to http://build.kiva.org.
