My lovely friend, Summer, posted a blog about a website that she had found called Kiva. I just spent about 2 hours browsing this website. Yes, I have no life.
Anyways, it's really cool website where you can go and send a $25 loan to an entrepreneur who is trying to start a business. Many of the entrepreneurs are from third world countries where it only takes a few hundred dollars to get a business up and running. Many of these people are trying to open up food markets, transportation companies, raise agriculture, or small markets where people can buy clothes, material, house supplies. You can loan a minimum of $25 to whichever person/group you choose. Then you get email updates about the company's progress and notified when your loan is repaid. Pretty amazing, huh?!
After looking through too many profiles, I finally settled on loaning to two different men.
1) Aamache is from Lebanon, and he owns a car mechanic shop. He is asking for $1200 to buy some tools and enlarge his shop. He and his wife are raising 6 kids.
2) Aquilino is a 69 year old man from Peru who has an Agriculture business. I don't know much about him because his profile was in Spanish...but he is the cutest little Peruvian man, and I had to do anything in my power to help him out. Check him out here!
I really do feel like this is a ministry. The goal of Kiva is to begin eliminating poverty by using the internet as a tool for microloaning around the world!
Go check it out! www.kiva.org
6 comments:
This is great; however, I'd encourage you to sponsor a woman as well. I am reading Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn and it says so much about how empowering women in third world countries as businesspeople transforms not only their lives, but their family's and community as well!
there were plenty of women to choose from, and i will be sponsoring one in the coming days. i actually found that that most of the women were achieving their loan goals more quickly than the some of the men were. i agree with you, i have read that transforming a woman's life actually has a larger impact on the family unit, local community and future...
interesting.... thanks for the post!
I love how you said you don't have a life (regarding how long you stayed on the site)...
Reminds me of what I do at times. get sucked in and then wonder why I got nothing done around here.
Yay Kara! I'm so glad you found this organization as exciting as I did. Thanks for sharing the info with your readers as well! Keep me updated on your guys.
I will definitely check this out. Love you heart for others, Kara.
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