If you’re considering giving money to charity this year, or if you’d just like to do some good, consider lending money to entrepreneurs around the world via Kiva. I’ve written about Kiva before, and that post included a link to a Frontline piece on the organization that you can watch online.
The box to the right features the four businesses Heidi and I have decided to lend money to. It will rotate randomly through them, highlighting the current state of each loan. Consider lending whatever you feel you can. The minimum loan amount from an individual lender is $25 and currently, Kiva has a 100% repayment rate. (It truly is a loan, though neither Kiva nor you will get any profit out of it…)
The box will remain up at least until the folks featured are fully funded or otherwise withdrawn for donations. They have dozens of other candidates around the world, so if these stories don’t get your attention, perhaps some others will.
(cross-posted to FatMixx)
Update: An undocumented feature… the box to the right automatically chooses other unfunded businesses if the one I specified is fully funded. I didn’t realize that. You can find the people I’ve funded by looking here.
Update 2: I’ve replaced the box that features businesses with a generic image ad because the kiva.org box was sometimes making the page slow to load. This one is fast and focuses on why we donated to them.
The Connecticutian 