I’ve been interested in the idea of microloans for a while now and have finally decided to take the plunge with a great organization named Kiva. To read more about what Kiva does, click here. My wife Tiffany and I had been looking for a charity to give to and then we saw a piece about Kiva shown on an episode of Frontline World on PBS. Microloans or Microcredit appealed to me, as I have spent a lot of time traveling in developing countries and I’ve seen how hard people work to start their own businesses. We’d put it off for a while, but then I decided to donate a portion of my photography commissions to Kiva. For any weddings booked after August of this year, I will donate $50 to Kiva. The great thing is that you can follow the loans and get updates from the people to whom you’ve loaned money. Also, about 99% of the money you loan gets repaid to you and then you just loan it out again.
Here are my first four loans. I have only contributed a small portion to their overall loan, but its a start.
We have
- Cecelia Abiodu, a Nigerian Woman who is trying to grow her soft drink business
- A group of three women in Peru who are developing a fish market
- A group of women in Guatemala who are developing a livestock collective
- Orlando Conrado, a Nicaraguan taxi driver who needs to improve his vehicle to support his family
So, as I book more weddings, I will donate more to Kiva. I will update the blog with any info I recieve so people can follow along.
