A cool way to make a difference!

So I just happened to watching ABC Evening News tonight and was told about one of the coolest things ever! (well, I don't expect you to be as excited as I am but hopefully you will be inspired as well...)
I have been familiar with the concept of microfinance and microcredit for many years now. One of the things that has economic development in empoverished and developing countries is the inability for entrepreneurs to have access to capital. A vegetable seller wants to borrow $100 to set up a stand in the local market. Where can he go to borrow that money? There were very few options. He has no credit history since he has never had a bank account, no real collateral, and the amount he wants to borrow is much less than the loan minimum a traditional bank would lend. Previously, there was no place to for him to get the funds for his dream. But increasingly, there are options for these types of small scale entrepreneurs. You may have heard about the most recent Nobel Prize winner, Mohammad Yunus. He was just a Pakistani economics professor who saw the need for these types of loan in his native Pakistan and has turned it into a large lending organization that has one of the highest repayment rates and lowest default rates of a lending organization in the world. (He also founded Grameen Phone which provides loans for cellphones to women in villages with little or no phone service, who then resell use of the phone to their village mates -- when a person would typically have to travel a day or two to use a phone, this is an invaluable service.) The impact that these loans have on the people who get them and the economies that benefit from them are immeasurable! I had even looked into getting a job with the organization but the headquarters is located in Seattle :-( For more information on Grameen Bank and its sister organizations, click here.

At any rate, while these organizations sound great, there have not really been ways for regular people to be involved in them. Until now......

Meet Kiva.org!

Kiva.org brings microlending to the people. The organization, whose name means "agreement" in Swahili, partners with microfinance organizations and allows you to search through opportunities in numerous countries to lend money to needy entrepreneurs. And even cooler, there is an opportunity to pool your money with other lenders. You don't have to take on the risk of the entire loan requested. Instead, donate however much to have to spare toward the amount requested. And in the 3 years the site has been in existence and of the 9,000 loans they have enabled, they have only have one default! The site also provides information and pictures of the person requesting the loan as well as allows you to create a profile that will be shared when you make a loan. It is the personal connection that is created that is particularly appealing. You get a feeling for where and to whom your money is going. So I urge you all to go to the site, take a look and maybe donate a few dollars. Just think, for the cost of a martini or two, you could give a family in Uganda a cow!

One of the reasons ABC News did a story on Kiva was that they just recently started offering loans to entrepreneurs in Iraq. So if you feel frustrated about the war or helpless to try to find a way to help the situation in Iraq, you can make a loan. Other countries where
you can make a difference include Samoa, Togo, Kenya, Ecuador, Mexico, Azerbaijan, Nicaragua, Honduras, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Ukraine, Tanzania, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Senegal, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cameroon, Bolivia, Uganda, Vietnam, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Guatemala & Bangladesh.

To view the ABC New story, click here.