I want to let you all know about a cool non-profit that is doing great things: Kiva.org
Kiva.org allows individuals to make $25 loans to low-income entrepreneurs in the developing world (microfinance). By doing so, individuals like you provide affordable working capital for the poor (money to buy a sewing machine, livestock, etc.), empowering them to earn their way out of poverty.
It's a new, direct and sustainable way to fight global poverty, and the way I see it, I get a higher return on $25 helping someone build a future than the interest my checking account pays.
5 comments:
Sounds like a great organization. I can't afford to contribute right now, but I'll bookmark the website and make a donation at a later time. Thanks for posting this.
I'm going to check out the bonafides for Kiva and if everything looks on the up and up (as I assume will be the case) I may well contribute. Echoing dostoy; thank you for posting this.
Thanks you guys. I learned of this pgm from the Oprah show. The neat thing about it is that it is a "LOAN" pgm and has over a 97% payback rate. Chances are extremely good that you'll get your investment back. So you can loan it to someone else - add to it and loan more. AND you get to follow the people you help which I think is cool.
Guess what? We have subsequently made a loan...to a dairy farmer in Azerbaijan.
We learned about Kiva from you. Thanks so much for letting us know about it.
Thank YOU Tim - I had forgotten about this until I got your email via Kiva and I subsequently made a loan to a man with a grocery in Tanzania and to a widow who sells shoes in Azerbijan. This is so exciting - I plan to extend a loan or two every two weeks.
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