Kiva helps you help those who help themselves

Andrew Leonard lent $25 to Mawulé Agbeka. This week, she paid him back.

Why should any of that matter to you or me? Because Leonard lent Agbeka the money through Kiva.org, an online site that allows individuals like you and me to connect with entreprenurs in countries around the world and if we choose, to make them a micro-loan - to be repaid, without interest - to help them achieve their entrepreneurial goals.

These are tiny loans - currently limited to just $25 per lender - that can literally transform the life of someone in poverty.

When Leonard initally wrote about making the loan to Agbeka in a thoughtful post about Kiva last year, he noted that

I am routinely astonished by the world as it emerges before me, but wrapping my brain around do-it-yourself microfinance has been one of those moments where I feel the earth move under my feet. It is a concrete manifestation of how the Internet is redrawing the world's lines of communication.

Kiva is proving so successful and so personalizes the act of helping someone help themselves that it is almost irresistible not to donate. I haven't yet chosen a borrower, given the distractions of the holiday season, but it is high on my to-do list in the New Year. I'll let you know how it goes.

ronnie