Comments on: Uh Oh, Christmas Is Coming

By: seattlereader

seattlereader — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 04:37:05 +0000

Jeremy,
Best of luck to you with Kiva. I’ve found it works great but it hasn’t been more than about 6 months or so that I’ve been trying it.
Here’s another one that’s a straight gift (with Kiva you get your money back… if you want it… and if you don’t you can lend it out again).
http://www.heifer.org/site/c.edJRKQNiFiG/b.204586/
I give all my “hard to buy for” people goats and geese and sheep and bees through Heifer.org… it’s a lot of fun and people really like it.

By: Jeremy Cherfas

Jeremy Cherfas — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 08:45:41 +0000

I’m going to give Kiva another try, but almost a year ago, when I was looking to make my own microloan, the web site was so bad it made me ferocious with frustration. More recently people have been saying better things about it, this being the latest. Perhaps it is time to try again. Or to try looking harder for alternatives.

By: seattlereader

seattlereader — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 01:56:04 +0000

You can see on Kiva’s website that they are now only taking donations of $25… because they are SO SUCCESSFUL they have more potential donors than they can handle. I’m sure they’ll catch up with more programs linked in and so more people needing loans. I think it’s the cleverest thing I ever saw. I originally heard about it in a Nick Kristoff column in the NYTimes… which linked to a video of him getting a haircut in Kabul from a barber he’d loaned to, and buying bread from the baker he’d invested in — both through Kiva.
Kiva also has a program where volunteers can go visit the businesspeople and file stories/updates/photos about how it’s going for them… again, a very clever twist. One more step in making-the-world-smaller-and-more-connected in these horrible times.
By the way, when I discovered that there were several would-be borrowers with my daughter’s name I decided to make that my criteria for lending — which was kind of fun. But later I branched out…