There's a 98% chance she'll pay you back! Yesterday I found an organization I've never heard of before. Maybe you have though. I still wanted to post it here (and all other forums I'm a member of), cause I though the idea was absolutely brilliant! The site is http://www.kiva.org Through this organization you can help people get microcredit. You help them get an intrest free loan, and they pay you back. Then you can choose to withdraw the money, or "reinvest" it. (It's not really an investment though. There's nothing in it for you other than the oportunity to improve someones life.) You can read though peoples "aplication", where they write about their families, lifes and tell how they will use the money. You can loan them anything, starting at only 25$. It's very engaging. Actually I'm a little hooked. I've started by lending out 50$. I've decided for myself that I'll give another 25-50$ every month cause this is so much fun! It's really great to be able to follow how the person you've given a loan to is doing. It actually feels much better than giving to organzations like red cross- probably because it's not as anonymous. When you give to red cross, you never know exactly who benefitted from your money. Also the idea of helping people who are not in complete disaster areas apeal to me. Helping people in normal situations improve their life and build up their communities, can probably help preventing those communities from becomming disasters. You can also lend money in other peoples names. Sort of like a gift sertificate. When the money is repayed, the person you gave the gift can withdraw the money or lend it to someone else. Hope some of you decide to try it out.
Thanks for that article I love that kiva program and will paypal them some funds.. I'm sure the international bankers aren't too happy about kiva..they seem to be doing all they can to shaft poor Countries..
I just recently learned about kiva and think it's an excellent program. Small donations go a long way helping the less fortunate.
They've already given a nobel price for microcredits, it was just last year. It was given to professor Muhammad Yunus, who started the concept of microcredit more than three decades ago.
There are giant Benetton ads in the tube (LDN Underground) this month entitled 'Microcredit', with life-size pictures of smiling Africans... Isn't this a bit suspicious? The Nation & the Guardian had critical views on microcredit back in 06... http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061030/bello http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2006/oct/17/businesscomment.internationalaidanddevelopment I think there's some Western self-congratulation going on again, as with many forms of charity, and this 'new' method is also very timely because entrepreneurship and independence is currently promoted by all kinds of governmental organisations and NGOs as the panacea to poverty. This logic says that lending is better than giving. In a way, this also denies the structural causes of poverty and puts responsibility on individuals for their failure to 'make it'. From my POV it seems like another instance of the 'social entrepreneurship' paradigm set up to replace/privatise social services in the UK... Not saying it doesn't help anyone, just that its effectiveness has been overhyped deliberately.
For people who are not in immediate need of help, why wouldn't lending be better than giving? Of course, I could easily just give someone money to buy a new sewing machine to upgrade a business they already have, but isn't that taking a bit of people's dignity away? It would certainly be charity, and the receiver would no doubt have considered it charity. (And there would have been a lot of self-congratulation in it...) On KIVA you can read some of the stories behind the people who apply for loans, or people who have once had loans. I remember many of the stories, amongst them one man (don't remember from where). He had started by getting a loan for a bike which he used to work as a "delivery-boy". That was a success, and when he had repaid the loan for the bike, he asked for a new loan, for a scooter this time. He rented out his bike, and used the scooter himself, and started transporting people. When the new loan was repaid, he again asked for a new loan, and bought a car, and started a taxi-service. The bike and scooter he rented out, so he still had income from them. In the end he owned a bike, a scooter and 3 taxis. Do you think he'd felt better about it if someone had just given him those 3 cars? Anyway, the likelihood of anyone just giving him money to buy that stuff is close to zero. By giving this man, who is obviously very smart and hard-working, loans, he did not just improve his own life. Since he's renting out a bike, a scooter and 2 taxis, he's managed to make jobs for 4 people. (And since they probably have families they support, who knows how many people actually have benefited from it.) The people who ask for microcredit loans, are generally not the poorest of the poorest. That's correct. It's certainly not the people in Darfur or Mogadishu. But it's ordinary people who are trying to make a better future for them self, and who can't get affordable loans other places.
