Thursday, April 24, 2008

The Cycle of A Good Deed

A while back I signed up for Kiva. It's a neat idea of micro financing. You loan $25 to a entrepreneur in a third world country. Your money is pooled with others, and the entrepreneur gets their loans. The loans are to help the entrepreneur's business, they can be for supplies, repairs, to pay wages, improvements, and the like.

Your paid back as the entrepreneur pays their loan back. Once it is paid back you are credited back the $25 you loaned. There is risk, as a few, a very few loans aren't repaid. However, my loan was paid back. She actually paid her loan off early. I had the option to cash out my $25, but I chose to keep the circle going and I loaned the money to another entrepreneur. I'm just happy to see it work.

For more on Kiva check out the article I wrote about them:

There are lots of things you could do with $25. You could easily spend it on diner, a movie, a concert, and you could donate it a charity. Did you know you could loan it to an organization to make philanthropic micro financing loans to help fight world poverty? (Link)

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