Loaning Cash and Winning Rice

I just loaned out some money to a lady in Cameroon and some more to a guy in Cambodia.

Many of you are already aware of this site (www.kiva.org), but if you’re not, you’re officially overdue to get informed.  Their little standard invitation email that you can send to friends goes like this…

I wanted to let you know about Kiva (www.kiva.org), a non-profit that allows you to lend as little as $25 to a specific low-income entrepreneur in the developing world.

You choose who to lend to – whether a baker in Afghanistan, a goat herder in Uganda, a farmer in Peru, a restaurateur in Cambodia, or a tailor in Iraq – and as they repay their loan, you get your money back.  It�s a powerful and sustainable way to empower someone right now to lift themselves out of poverty.

So now you know.

A friend put me on to another site as well.

Two nights ago, with barely sleeping baby on my shoulder, I earned over 1000 grains of rice, 10 grains at a time, for people in developing nations by answering trivia questions about our world.  So go forth, be smart, and feed people… www.freerice.com.  And explore the site some too.  On it is some intriguing information.  For example, did you know that my very own Canadian government has thus far declined to follow the lead of several European nations to give at 0.7% of its annual wealth to the developing nations.  Trust the Scandinavian countries to leave us in their nordic dust.

If you care to send a “spurring” letter to our own government, they are waiting to be found and sent right from the site.

That’s it.  Over and out.

2 thoughts on “Loaning Cash and Winning Rice

  1. Kiva is great, there are a few other micro finace site showing up which is good, but Kiva still seems to be the most organized. I will have to check out the free rice site.

    I changed my vote this year based partly on the 0.7% GNP mark that has not been met even with years of surplus…even when it was our government who pushed through the idea in the 1970’s…an average of the wealthiest countries, the G8, is only 0.19%…I hope we can cathc up to our nordic counterparts soon…
    Kori

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