The Boss of You

I received a link to the Kiva web­site this morn­ing from a client who works in Com­mu­nity Eco­nomic Devel­op­ment. The site helps facil­i­tate micro-lending at a very indi­vid­ual level allow­ing indi­vid­u­als to loan funds to entre­pre­neurs and busi­ness peo­ple in the devel­op­ing world. You can read more about the pro­gram here, but I was per­son­ally quite struck after sort­ing the data­base of busi­nesses in need of lend­ing by gen­der (results here). Not too sur­pris­ingly, I sorted by “female” and so enjoyed read­ing the pro­files of indi­vid­ual busi­nesses women are run­ning around the world.

The way the process works is that you lend an amount of money (as lit­tle as $25 USD) to a business/business per­son of your choice. You then receive updates as to how that busi­ness is doing from the busi­ness per­son them­selves (if they choose), and when your loan is repaid you can either pull it out, or reloan it to finance another business.

This seems like a really awe­some way for those of use who have enjoyed suc­cess as busi­ness peo­ple to sup­port others.