This month half the profits from neveroutgrowyourcar.com have gone to Kiva. Kiva is one of the many microfinance organizations now in existence and our family has donated to them several times over the years. As one of our “Christmas countdown” activities, each of the boys gets to choose someone on Kiva to donate to. Through the site you can narrow down your search by sex, country or even sector (agriculture, arts, clothing, education, health, retail, etc.). Right now they just enjoy getting to look at the map and choose the country they want to focus on. Primo had recently heard about the earthquake in Haiti and asked if there was anyone in Haiti he could choose. So we narrowed down our search to people in Haiti. Then we looked at the photos of the people, read their name and a little bit about what they wanted to borrow the money for. Throughout the year the boys will ask about the person they lent money to and how they are doing, and we can log into our Kiva account and see if there is an update.
I love micro-lending for several reasons. The first is that it allows people to help themselves, to decide what they need, and to provide a way for them to do it themselves. And the second is that once the loan is repaid you are notified by Kiva that your money is available to be redistributed. So the money that’s donated once will help countless people over the years as the original money is lent out and repaid and lent out again over and over again until one day, I hope, there will be no more poverty.
Related posts:
Follow Us!