Kiva

I hope this is the end of my hiatus and reign as the deadbeat blogging buddy! 

When I was in high school one of my teachers shared with me that she was typically happy to sponsor fundraisers that her students were participating in.  She said that when she was younger, she had more time than money so she spent more time volunteering. And now that she had 3 children and a dual career home to run, she had more money than time (which, now that I think back, I am sure each one of her 3 children are fully grown, so I am curious where she is now in this spectrum, and yes, I am that old!).

I seem to find myself in an in-between stage, with just a little extra money and just a little extra time, but neither a clear abundance of time nor money.  I have been unsure of where to focus my donating dollars (beyond the periodic fundraising done by friends and acquaintances which I will typically support). 

I ultimately decided to support Kiva.  This is a fairly well known micro-finance organization specifically focused on people in developing nations.  We got to pick the project/individual we wanted to support, and there are so many ways to select the project (by dollar amount, by country, by how close it is to being fully funded) that it was fun to look through the different projects and finally select one. There is a neat little video here which explains how Kiva works in an interesting way

 I used it as an opportunity to expand my four year old's perspective just a little bit.  We got out the globe and looked at where we live and where the person who we are loaning our money to lives.  We talked about the ways our lives are probably different and probably the same. 

I found a positive spin on being a deadbeat blogging buddy.  It has only been a couple of months since I did our first Kiva loan and we have already had 1/3 of it repaid.  This is no surprise, as Kiva has almost a 99% repayment rate.  But that means that I am beginning to see how the cycle of Kiva can work.  I plan on looking for another project to finance.  I intend to continue to include my children in the process, increasing their involvement as they grow!