www.kiva.org

A friend told me about this site, and it sounded like a really neat thing. When I looked at the site, I was even more impressed.

It's a lot like the church's perpetual education fund except that it's for small businesses (and it's not a church program). The idea is that regular, ordinary people lend money (as little as $25) to a specific person in a developing county who needs capital to start or increase whatever their livelihood is. Then they repay the loan (usually between 8 and 24 months later) and you can decide if you want it back or you want to loan it to someone else.

Anyway, I thought it was impressive enough to pass on. I recently watched The Constant Gardner (on our ClearPlay) and this reminded me of a scene from it. The wife who's a humanitarian asks her husband to pull over while they're driving through a third-world country. She's recognized 3 people from the hospital and knows that they are walking 40 miles home and so she wants to give them a ride. He says that there are thousands of people and that she can't help all of them. She responds to him, "But these are three we can help."

It seems that the problems of the world are so overwhelming that we do nothing because we can't possibly do everything. Kiva is a way to do something that could help someone. Especially at a time when most all of us are feeling the effects of the economy, something like this reminds us of how much we really have.

I'm interested in getting a group together so that we can lend the entire amount of one request (we'd find one that was only about $300 and then we'd get 6-12 people to go in $25-$50). I think it would be awesome to do a loan as a family group. Let me know if you're interested.