Hi Everyone,
For several years now we have supported and recommended Kiva as our recommended charity. The basic premise of Kiva is to facilitate the lending of small loans to entrepreneurs in third world countries.
The 30DC has raised a significant amount via the 30DC auction and donations and has made well over 300 loans so far.
Pete Williams has organised and managed the 30DC auction for the last 2 years and he has recorded a video on Kiva for the 30DC Pre-season.
You can access the Kiva video in the training centre.
Ed
These small loans for third world countries is one of the greatest ideas of this century. While a “normal” bank would never deal with that, the people taking such loans are much more reliable and trustworthy than the average bank loan customer.
I recently read Richard Branson’s new book where he told a similar story. On one of his travels a woman asked him to borrow her $150 for the purchase of a sewing machine. She wanted to start a sewing business. He didn’t know her and didn’t believe that he would get the money back ever but he gave it to her. She really bought a sewing machine and also has now several other women working for her. She was successful and paid everything back.
Imagine how such little money did change so many lives.
Gunter
“Kiva” means “Nice” in Finnish
..such a suitable name for a charity
I think this is a great idea well done everybody involved with this at 30dc.
I have supported World Vision for about 10years,and will certainly support Kiva i would urge everybody to do the same, this is the sort of thing that will make a difference in the world not Goverments.
I think this is a great idea well done everybody involved with this at 30dc
Nice, nice very Kiva !
How can I participate by acting not talking… Mail me the concrete steps to follow so that I can join preferably before starting the 30DC.
Not to discourage anyone from supporting Kiva, but I thought this might be a good forum to bring up United Prosperity, an organization with a similar mission, but different model. With UP, you browse entrepreneur profiles and then provide a loan guarantee. This guarantee is given to a local bank (no foreign currency exchange) and used as collateral. The bank then frees up a loan usually twice the size of the guarantee for the MFI to distribute to the entreprenurs. Check it out! http://www.unitedprosperity.org.
Great news the EU shows level of potency again:-)