What a Great Idea

A friend passed along a link to an interesting website the other day. Namely, kiva.org. The idea is a simple one. The amount of money needed to invest in businesses in the developing world is paltry to someone in the industrialized one. The site matches investors with entrepreneurs. And allows you to loan money to someone trying to set up a farm or a shop for as little as $25.

And rather than this being an outright gift, that money is a loan which will, hopefully, eventually be repaid. It's not much to me, maybe the price of a nice dinner, but to someone in Afghanistan (Or Samoa, which seems to be a popular location for this sort of thing for some reason) that money goes a lot further. A measy $25 dollars won't do much by itself but combined with other lenders, it adds up, and can make a significant difference in lives. And in these areas, this kind of funding is hard to come by - most banks won't give out loans to the truly poor in the 3rd world, after all.

This is, in my opinion, a wonderful application of the principles of microcredit (Which, you know, I've been interested in ever since I heard of Banker to the Poor.). It's not charity, but it is giving out a helping hand to those who could use a little help. Rather than belittling them by handing them the money, it empowers them by giving them responsibility. It relies on people's better natures and the best part is it works.

I'll be honest, I'm not exactly flush with money myself at the moment but this is the kind of project I'm happy to fund. It might mean a week or two or scrimping and saving for me, but compared with what it could give someone else, that's a very small price to pay. I will have to investigate the site a bit more to find out if it's on the level and all before I actually open the checkbook because, you know, I'm skeptical of a lot of so-called non-profits (I've worked with one or two and, you know, seen how they actually function.) but if everything checks out, I'm definitely signing up.