Quote:
Originally Posted by Moontanman
Hmmm, the amount of money I have to live on?
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You do get your money back; so it only costs you the lousy bit of interest the bank gives you. (or the CC debt)
This
KIVA site seems is a possibility, even for me. Perhaps a suggested Christmas present from the kids.
(Although I might wait till the Oz $ recovers from its 30% drop against the US $)
It looks good. It breaks down the bigger loans into $25. amounts.
I wonder if anyone, here, has any personal experiences of it?
I think you can donate on behalf of Atheists or Christians too !
(I often worry that my Aid donations will go to support Evangelists.)
Kiva - About Microfinance
Kiva - What Is Kiva?
It is a pity that there seems to be no microfinace in Developed countries like Australia. I am sure there are many out-back aboriginal and other people who could use this sort of help.
Here is high praise from
Forbes no less!
Quote:
When Small Loans Make A Big Difference
Knowledge@Wharton 06.03.08, 4:00 PM ET
Media Billionaires
The Forbes 400
Nearly everyone told Matt and Jessica Flannery that their idea--a Web site where people could make micro loans to individual borrowers in the developing world--wouldn't work.
Venture capitalists couldn't see how anyone could make big money on loans as small as a few hundred dollars. And foundations, for their part, wouldn't support something that they saw as commerce, not charity. "We were in this weird social entrepreneurship space, trying to fight perceptions," Matt Flannery recalled.
One lawyer friend even told Flannery the Web site would be illegal. "He said, 'You can't just send money to someone in Uganda and have [him or her] send it back and have it be OK. If you do that, someone's going to care. Someone's going to show up at your door,'" Flannery said. "I read all the policy and case law on it, and I couldn't find anything that said it was illegal. So we just started doing it."
That decision proved prescient. Today, the Web site the Flannerys created-- Kiva.org--is one of the hottest and hippest on the Web. One online commentator compared it to an online dating service, and even former U.S. president Bill Clinton has praised its virtues. Kiva's 270,000 lenders--people who typically hand over their money, via credit card, in $25 increments--have funded borrowers in places as far flung as Tanzania and Tajikistan.
So far, they have assisted about 40,000 borrowers in 40 countries and provided a total of about $27 million in funding.
A wave of international attention came to the practice of micro lending when Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for pioneering work in the field.
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More here
When Small Loans Make A Big Difference - Forbes.com
Another article here:
Global Business
