On Daily Kos and My Left Wing there is a wonderful diary that I don’t see here. There is a company called Kiva that does microloans to small businesses in Uganda. You can loan directly to a particular individual through Kiva and since they pool people’s money, you can loan as little as $25 at a time. On dKos people have been going crazy and have been filling up the loans needed to the point that the person who runs the site can barely keep up. More below.
Update [2005-10-28 6:53:57 by mole333]: Currently the below lending opportunity has been filled. They are looking for more businesses in need of loans but they are limited by the lack of infrastructure. There is another group that is helping build an infrastructure in Uganda in cooperation with the microlenders. dKos covered the current microloan need. Can Booman T cover the infrastructure need? It isn’t a loan in this case, it is a tax-deductable donation, but the impact is, if anything, more important.
This is not a donation, but it also is not a money making opportunity. It is a chance to loan someone the amount of money it will take to get their small business going or to upgrade their business. The loans seem to all be around $300-500, again with each person contributing as little as $25.
Microlending is a tried and true method of helping people get small businesses going. The payback rate for microlending is far better than that of regular loan structures. So this is a real, tangible way to make a critical difference in someone’s life without any long-term cost to yourself other than the loss of use of some of your money for the period of the loan.
On the daily Kos diary there are also comments discussing other similar ways of making microloans and related ways to help. So without further ado, here is the Daily Kos diary that got it all rolling.
