Monday, January 12, 2009

A fistful of dollars...

Ok, this is so so cool.
On June 3, 2008 I loaned $25 to a group of 3 people in Sierra Leone, West Africa so they could expand their business. There were 30 other people from around the world that also loaned a fistful of dollars to this group. The amount requested was 1,200 and they were fully funded.
On August 28th, I started receiving monthly payments back from them. $2.08/month. As of today, I have received $10.41 and this group has repayed 42% of their loan.
If you have not heard of them, I would just like to put in a plug for www.kiva.org.
It is thru this organization that I was able to "loan" someone money on the other side of the world. Today, I found the following video in my inbox. It does a great job of explaining exactly how micro-lending works.
Watch it.
And then consider loaning someone some money.
You get to go through profiles and pick out exactly who you want to receive the money. You set up your own profile and the people recieving the money get to see who YOU are. It is so cool. And so so simple. This is such an awesome idea and organization. And now I am free to loan out the $10.41 that I have in my account or I can withdraw it at any time.
$25.
What is that to me?
Not much.
So worth it.
Watch...


A Fistful Of Dollars: The Story of a Kiva.org Loan from Kieran Ball on Vimeo.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Wow. I LOVE it...what an amazing thing to do!! The video is cool, too. :) I will definitely be looking into this.

Brandi said...

I'm signing up right now. . I knew about it, but this post put me over the edge! finally!

Brandi