Kiva, a crowdfunding organization known for making small loans to help people in poverty-stricken areas start businesses, has a created a green loans program designed to help kick start solar and other renewable energy businesses in developing countries.

“Kiva's work in clean green energy and solar varies from small microloans of a few hundred dollars that help to finance purchase of solar lights for home and commercial use and solar charging units in small villages so that the community can plug in to charge their appliances to $15,000 loans helping small medium enterprises purchase solar products in bulk and build a distribution networks across off-the-grid regions,” said Kiva spokesman Jason Riggs.

Kiva allows anyone with an Internet connection to make a loan for as little as $25. Kiva boasts a network of more than 900,000 individual lenders crowdfunding more than $2.2 million a week and $420 million since the nonprofit was created in 2005. It’s green loan program has helped to fund 2,600 entrepreneurs in 21 countries.

Riggs said there have been several clean energy and solar projects over this year. Two of the bigger solar projects include Earth Spark, which funded loans for 38 renewable energy entrepreneurs in Haiti. The average loan in that program was $600, Riggs said.

The other is Solar Sister in Uganda. That program provides loans to women who want to begin selling solar lights. The company structure is a bit like Avon in that women can buy into the business for little more than the cost of the solar lights and begin selling them in their own villages.

Women make up 70 percent of the poor living without electricity in Uganda, according to the Solar Sister website. And they’re the ones who are primarily responsible for making the decision to switch from kerosene to solar lights.

Kiva helped to fund startup costs for 11 women who started with Solar Sister in Uganda. Those loans averaged $300.

“Our goal in crowdfunding green loans is to leverage the patient, risk-tolerant capital provided by Kiva lenders to advance clean green energy solutions for the world’s poor,” said Premal Shah, President and co-founder of Kiva. “The loans you fund on Kiva help to create sustainable supply chains in isolated regions and make renewable energy products more affordable. The benefits for the borrowers are less energy consumption, more savings, and improvements in health and well-being. The benefits for all of us are increased adoption of renewable energy and a healthier shared environment.”