Charity Raises Money for Small Loans to Help Overseas Students

The Vittana Foundation, a new organization in Seattle, has created a Web site that allows people on the Internet to make smalls loans to help students in emerging countries, such as Nicaragua, Peru, and the Philippines, pay for college or vocational training.

Microfinance institutions want to make student loans, but because that idea has not been proven in the developing world, they can’t get the capital needed to make the loans, says Kushal Chakrabarti, the nonprofit organization’s co-founder and chief executive.

He hopes that Vittana can demonstrate there’s a market for such loans, spurring the flow of capital necessary to make them widely available in emerging countries.

“We want to show the microfinance community and the world that education is just as income-generating as starting a business,” says Mr. Chakrabarti, “that going to school as a programmer or a designer or as an accountant is as income-generating as opening a fruit stand on the side of the road.”

Visitors to the site have loaned students more than $11,000 so far.

Vittana — which means seed in the South Indian language of Telugu — is increasing the number of loans available on the site monthly. In August, Vittana added loans totaling $5,000 to the site. That figure climbed to $25,000 in September.

To get there: Go to http://www.vittana.org.