We’re floored on a daily basis by students who have struggled against all odds to finish their education, lenders who time and again come back to change yet another person’s life, and Fellows who dedicate a portion of their own lives to bringing microloans to more students in developing countries. It’s the students, the lenders, our partners, and our Fellows that compel us to do what we do. But at the end of the day, it’s our supporters and donors that make it all possible.

So we are thrilled to announce that Vittana’s efforts received a big boost today! Google.org announced that it will support Vittana to build 24 additional student loan programs by 2013.  This support is perfectly timed at the end of an insane year of growth. We doubled our field partners from 10 to 20 microfinance institutions over the course of 2011 – that puts us in 12 different countries on 4 continents. Whew.  And after taking a little more than two years to reach our 1,000^th student, we’re on track to pass 2,000 students in December, less than six months later.

On stage at TEDx Brussels in November, Vittana CEO and co-founder Kushal Chakrabarti asked “What’s the one thing that can truly change the course of someone’s life? Education.” We’re thinking big. We’re out there to start a global market for education microfinance – one that will reach 1 million students by 2015. Because at the end of the day, we believe student microloans are the most scalable, sustainable, and impactful tool we have to fight global poverty.

So thank you to Google and to our many other donors and supporters for helping us change the conversation about global education.

The excitement level is through the roof here at Vittana! And there are three very good reasons for our more-than-usual boisterousness.

1. Last night, Vittana won best non-profit start-up at the Seattle 2.0 Awards. Seattle is known worldwide for its innovative start-up community, and we’re excited and humbled to be a part of it.

See Kushal’s acceptance speech and check out the live twitter feed for #s2a.

But that’s not the only great news we have to share!

2. April was our biggest month ever! Our amazing community lent more than $60,000 to more than 60 students. (Special thanks to the good folks at BEAN for their amazing support this month.)

3. And, as icing on the cake, it’s our birthday! This week, we’re celebrating the Vittana website’s second birthday. To date, our community is 5,433 strong. Individuals from 47 countries have lent more than $660,875.

Together, we’ve empowered almost 1,000 students around the world with access to education.

We want to thank our amazing team, our board, our advisors, our volunteers and our fantastic fellows for all of their hard work and tenacity in helping us reach these goals. But moreover, we want to thank our lenders, donors, supporters, and cheerleaders. We just couldn’t have done this without you. It’s thanks to your support that we’re setting our sights even higher in the weeks and months ahead!

Here’s to another great year!

A few weeks ago we got a nice surprise in our inbox; we got the news that Netted was featuring Vittana in their daily email.

Quite nice of them, don’t you think?

Here’s the article in case you’d like to take a peek.

Netted sends a daily internet-focused email that introduces its members to one great new app, website, and online products and tools. Their tagline is “Better living through the internet”.

We’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone at Netted (which is the brain child of the same folks that brought you the Webby Awards) for helping Vittana get the word out about our work to bring student lending and better education to the rest of the world.

We woke up this morning to some disturbing news: that Nobel Prize Winner (and “grandfather” of the microfinance movement) Muhammad Yunus has been asked to step down as Managing Director of Grameen Bank (which he founded 1983).

We’ve been following the story and wanted to send you a chronology of articles so that you can keep up-to-date on these big changes going on in microfinance.

March 2:

• NYT: Microcredit Pioneer Ousted
• Forbes: Muhammad Yunus Told to Step Down from Grameen Bank
• Nicholas Kristof (Editor at the NYT): http://www.facebook.com/kristof
• NPR: Bangladesh Forces Microcredit Pioneer From Bank
• BBC: Bangladesh: Muhammad Yunus Disputes Grameen Sacking

Feb 28:
The Guardian: Grameen Bank Founder Muhammad Yunus Survives Attempt to Oust Him

Feb 21:
The Guardian: Microfinance Guru Faces Removal From Grameen Bank

Feb 15:
BBC: Muhammad Yunus: Bangladesh Urges Him To Retire

Jan 26:
The Guardian: Microfinance and the Fallout from the Muhammad Yunus Case

Jan 18:
The Guardian: Grameen’s Muhammad Yunus in Court for Defamation Case

Jan 12:
BBC: Bangladesh Announces Probe into Grameen Bank

Jan 5:
NYT: Is Bangladesh Trying to Take Over Grameen Bank?

Earlier this week we posted about the great stuff going on at the Clinton Global Initiative, but yesterday was a particularly special moment in Vittana history.

Wednesday September 22, we announced the launch of our new initiative Vittana/Africa: Bringing Student Loans to Africa on stage at the special plenary session on Democratizing Education at CGI. This initiative marks our entrance into Africa, where we hope to serve more than 10,000 students with access to loans for post-secondary education within the next five years. (Learn more in our full press release.)

We were recognized as a CGI Commitment Maker by special guests like retired General Wesley Clark and were honored by receiving a handshake from President Bill Clinton himself.

We don’t have the official photos yet, so please forgive the blurry shot below, but here’s our fearless Co-Founder and CEO with General Clark at CGI.

And if you’d care to view it, here’s the entire plenary session on how education is the key to economic growth:

Today the Economist gave education loans the nod as “the next big thing in microfinance.”

And while usually we’d get a little sheepish about claiming to be involved in a “hotbed” of anything, if the Economist calls “finding new ways to fund poor students” a “hotbed of innovation,” then that’s one bed we’re happy to jump right into with both feet.

We’re particularly honored and humbled to be featured in this article alongside visionaries like our partners in Mongolia, XacBank. (See our students from XacBank.)

Former exec of XacBank, Ganhuyag Ch. Hutagt, was quoted as saying “Lending to get a student through college is a far better way to fight poverty than making small-business loans.”

This is music to our ears.

For more information about the opportunity, risks and rewards of lending to students like Betsy, we invite you to read the article in full, and learn why “millions of poor would-be students could benefit” from this new innovation in microfinance.

March is shaping up to be a busy month for Vittana! Check out what’s been going on:

March Madness
Our March Microfinance Madness competition is going strong, but there  are only 12 days left! We have fully funded 52 students, and there are plenty more to go. Take a look at our March Madness page and join an existing group or start one of your own!

Currently in the lead:
1. Atheists with 11 members and $757 total

2. Brigham Young University with 28 members and $488 total

Stay updated on your group’s progress on the website or on our twitter.

Recent Press:

Vittana: Forget $40K, Send Someone to College for $10
Kushal, our CEO and fearless leader, posted a guest blog on Huffington Post earlier this week. He wrote, “In just 10 months, Vittana has built some of the first college micro-loan programs in six countries around the world including Nicaragua, Peru, and Vietnam.”

Vittana Applies the Kiva Model
Tech Crunch released this popular article about Vittana on the 15th of March, and it proceeded to be tweeted out hundreds of times that day. They say “TechCrunch is participating in the initiative and will be facing The Huffington Post, Redfin and others to raise funds. Join our group and make your donation today!”

Vittana March Microfinance Madness
Next Billion lets you know why you should join their team in our March Microfinance Madness challenge!

Thank you for all of your press and kind words, and good luck to your March Microfinance Madness group! Stay tuned for a recap post at the beginning of April.

Vittana has received some wonderful press over the past few months. To keep you in the loop, here are some of our favorite links.

February 2010:

Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies

Fast Company named Vittana one of the top 10 most innovative finance companies.

January 2010:

Global Community Listens to the Voices of Microfinance: Vittana

Social Earth wrote an article on Vittana that features one of our students, Howard!

Chris Cuellar, a Chicago lender interviewed, says “This micro-loan was a small portion on my part, but through Vittana, many people’s small portions can add up to make a large impact on someone.”

5 Social Capitalists Who Will Change the World in 2010

Fast Company named Vittana founder Kushal Chakrabarti one of the top 5 social capitalists who will change the world.

“In poorer countries, [Vittana is] offering opportunities where none had existed before.”

December 2009:

College Loans as Development Aid

The New York Times wrote this wonderful article on Vittana.

By the time this article was published in December, “[Vittana] provided financing for roughly 33 loans totaling $37,000.”

Deveolping Peer to Peer Lending for College

The Fox Business Network interviewed Kushal Chakrabarti in this video piece.

Thanks to the sites who have covered us, and keep an eye out for more press in the future!

In case you missed it, here is your reading guide to Vittana in the news for the last month:

Huffington Post: “HuffPo Game Changers: Your picks for the Ultimate 10”

After 1.7 million votes, our CEO Kushal Chakrabarti was named the Ultimate Game Changer in Philanthropy by Huffington Post readers.

NextBillion: “Vittana: Student Loans and a New Generation of Microfinance”

NextBillion states that there is a “lack of attention paid to possible synergies between microfinance products and education”, and explains how Vittana addresses this market failure.

Check out our video and hear directly from our students!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Myz8llpbpDU[/youtube]

Seattle Times: “More on crowdsourcing: ideas for philanthropy and development”

Kristi Heim shares that our CEO made the Huffington Post “Ultimate Game Changer” list and that voting is open. She also wrote about us here back in July.

Social Earth: “Vittana Applies Microfinance Model to Education”

Social Earth supporter Naiomi believes “that everyone should have an equal opportunity to pursue a world class education”. Her article outlines what we are doing at Vittana to work toward that goal.

TBD: “Vittana // Simply Genius”

I think the title says it all for this post.