It starts by helping someone change her life situation. One way is with a microloan: an amount we in the West wouldn’t consider too significant, but which is quite enough to help a small merchant in Tanzania or a farmer in Samoa to buy supplies and equipment.
I may have first heard about microloans and the way they were changing women’s lives around the world in Pink, a magazine for professional women. If you haven’t seen it, I encourage you to get a trial copy or subscription. I always find two or three great articles or tidbits in there. (The cover story on Nobel Prize-winning economist Muhammad Yunus in Ode was great as well. I loved seeing his smiling face; the warmth of his work shone right up from the paper.) Ode is worth your money, as well, especially if you are an "intelligent optimist" (cover tag line).
So, while wandering around Zaadz yesterday (the social networking site for people who want to change the world), I came across an ad for Kiva, a site that helps us, here, to lend money to just the kind of people we’ve been talking about. I’ll let them tell it:
We let you loan to the working poor
Kiva lets you connect with and loan money to unique small businesses in the developing world. By choosing a business on Kiva.org, you can "sponsor a business" and help the world’s working poor make great strides towards economic independence. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates from the business you’ve sponsored. As loans are repaid, you get your loan money back.
I’m rushing out of town now, but I’m hopping right on Kiva when I return. I hope you’ll join me in making small, meaningful "loans that change lives."
Likewise, I invite you to join me at Zaadz.
Finally, I’ll close with a quote I like:
"The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts: 1) To return love for hate; 2) To include the excluded; and 3) To say ‘I was wrong.’" – Ernst Heinrich Haeckel
