Kiva.org - Skip the Red Buckets outside Target this Holiday Season…
and use Kiva.org, a site that facilitates P2P microfinancing AKA adopting a developing world business . It works like the sponsor a child programs that we see infomercials for, however by giving to these loans you are practicing my friend Jammy’s motto: “You buy a man a burger he eats for a day; you find that man a job he eats for a while.”
When you have selected the business to donate to, you can even subscribe to the RSS feed to get updates on the business! Also, after a little bit of poking on Kiva’s site, I found that the repayment rate on these loans are upwards of 95%. And if you’re just not quite VC material, and the business you chose fails, just think of it as a donation to a good cause.
Here is the link to the business I chose to give to, please contribute too! However if you are a grinch this holiday season and want to make money off your loans, give Prosper.com a try. It’s a site where you can bid on loans, like on eBay. Here’s the NY Times article covering the launch earlier this year.
Happy Holidays!
This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 22nd, 2006 at 2:56 am and is filed under social networking, money, community. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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