A holistic approach to alleviating poverty in India through community mobilisation: focussing on health improvement, education, entrepreneurship and sustainable living.

Poor communities in India do not have access:

  • To clean drinking water and sanitation
  • To any credit or capital
  • To training and literacy

Our goal is to alleviate poverty in the slums and villages of Gujarat (and Western India) by providing low-interest micro loans to the poor so they can build sustainable businesses.

  • We work with federations (official communities) of women and men who share a common goal of wanting to become self-sufficient.
  • Together we implement training of hygiene, financial literacy, savings, entrepreneurship skills and mentoring to ensure sustainable businesses.
  • We call donations investments because when loans have been repaid, all monies are recycled to help create even more loans for more entrepreneurs.

We do this by focussing on:

  • Water, Health, Sanitation: Alleviate illnesses such as malaria, dengue fever and construct eco-sanitation toilets
  • Microfinance and livelihoods: Provide loans at a low interest rate all of which is recycled in the community
  • Sustainable businesses: Enable artisans to sell their items online so they can scale their small businesses

Entrepreneurship: Helping the poorest of the poor with a $30 investment

We provide low-interest micro loans to the poorest of the poor in slums and villages in Gujarat, India. Online investments for as little as $30 help poor entrepreneurs create new businesses, which in turn, help improve the living conditions for their families. We call donations investments because when loans have been repaid, all monies are recycled to help create even more loans for more entrepreneurs. By investing as little as $30, you help bring many entrepreneurs and families out of poverty over many years to come. We provide mentoring, training, attention to health care issues and funds to build sustainable businesses.

How we are different to Kiva?

We are usually compared with Kiva, so the best way to explain what we do is to compare how we are different.

Kiva is not a Microfinance Institution. Shanti is. Kiva is a shop window to help lenders provide micro loans via their microfinance partners around the world. Kiva doesn’t cap their partners’ interest rates. We do. If you lend money to Kiva, your money is being repaid at an interest rate of 35% on average, with some as high as 65%. At Shanti we cap the total interest rate at 12% and that 12% is used for the local community to look after group interests.

Let’s alleviate poverty through microfinance!

We are in the process of building a new website. In the meantime you can learn more about the team and make online “investments” here.