Kiva

So I'm out promoting and financing capitalism now. At least it's empowering, small-time entrepreneurship since I have spent enough money towards multinational corporations and big box department stores in the past month. *sigh*

So this is Kiva. I guess it's got a lot of press lately but I don't have a TV or pay attention to news of this type. However, I have heard of microloans. The idea is that you loan someone $25 (or $50 or $75) as part of a greater loan anywhere from like $50 to $1500 and they repay it in a certain amount of time (interest-free, you don't get to make money off the poor). The actual lending is done by local providers who are partnered with Kiva. They also keep updates on the people's lives and the health of their business.

After looking around the site for quite a while and reading about different people's proposals I picked a woman who had used the site twice before and owned a clothing shop in Mozambique. She needed $400 to expand her business. Here is her profile page. I sent her $25 (plus an additional 10%, which was optional, towards Kiva) and in five months she should have it all paid off (she's set to repay monthly so maybe I'll see a $5 payment next month) and I can recycle that money and maybe add another $25 to the pot.

This way my money isn't just sitting in a bank somewhere (actually, I'm at WECU credit union now) but instead being used to help people. It's also better than a straight-up donation because "aid" actually really hurts a lot of people. The United States loves to dump cheap or free goods into a country, which wrecks their economy. While I am definitely still socialist in outlook, welfare only works in small amounts and other methods are much more beneficial to help people get on their feet.

Anyway, you get the $25 back this way so you don't lose a thing and you get to help a specific person out. It's also the only organization to get special favors from PayPal to not charge any fee for transactions so your entire $25 goes to the individual and overhead costs are donated separately (recommended 10%, so $2.50). It's a good idea and it can't hurt.

God has given me a more steady income now and I'm slowly getting on my feet myself but how much more are people in poorer countries hurting? I'm quite rich in their standards and anyway, poor folk need to help each other out, we can't expect the rich to do it for us.

This is a little JavaScript banner. If it doesn't show her business, that means her loan has been gathered together... Then we can wait in excitement for her to get her money and build her business.