Wednesday, February 14, 2007

An antidote to degeneracy

After losing enough money to house and feed your average immigrant family in Argentina for at least 6 weeks in one sitting yesterday, I felt the need to promote Kiva.org to combat my feelings of degeneracy.

Kiva (meaning "agreement" or "unity" in Swahili), is a brilliant website that enables the relative wealthy of the world to lend money to the poorest entrepeneurs in the developing world. When (and if) the loan is repaid you can hit the cashout button, or reinvest in another entrepeuner.

Kiva have a repaymemnt rate of 100% thus far. Such microfinance loans have a global return rate of 97% according to the United Nations Capital Development Fund.

What is fantastic about Kiva is that 100% of your money reaches the entrepeneur....
and it's beauty is that you can lend as little as $25 completely free of fees via Paypal.

So fellow degenerates, here's my strategy to at a least feeling a little shred of decency:

Initial $200 investment (at -3% remember, and bear in mind that the entrepeneurs will pay much more in interest rates) from me, spread $25 amongst 8 entrepeuners.

100% of blog revenue upto $200 will also be invested (scheduled for 2009 at current rate).

;-)

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