Kiva, anyone?

I need to step away from the bitterness and rancor in the Vietnam adoption community for a while.  Think about the irony of that.  Well-meaning people wanting to do good in the world by helping a child are attacking each other personally.  What is wrong with that picture?  Where is the tolerance we would hope these people as parents would teach their children?

Before I slip back into that, I wanted to remind myself that corruption doesn’t permeate the world. That you can do good for people without worrying whether you’re engaged in a crime. I received an email today from another organization with which I work.  It’s called Kiva at www.kiva.org. I didn’t know much about microfinance before I started volunteering with them, but I encourage you to check it out. Kiva lets you make a small loan to a small business around the world. You get to choose which business you fund (e.g., you want to help a single mother, you get to decide). The amounts loaned to these people are extremely small in our world (under $1000 and Kiva wants individuals to contribute no more than $25 per loan) and the repayment of such loans is almost 100%.  A very little goes a very long way.

Other than the fact that I get to choose who I lend to, the funds actually get repaid to my account, so I get to reinvest the funds that are repaid. All of my loans have been repaid or are on time on their repayments, so the funds just get passed on to another person trying to build their business. 

This  picture above is one of the women whose loans I’ve funded.

November 10, 2007 - Posted by Oscar and Etta's mom | microfinance