Kiva – Loans that Change Lives

Posted in Uncategorized on July 16th, 2009

I’m re-visiting my blog with a charitable post.  As I have begun my professional career in business and become more focused on profits and personal wealth, I have lost sight of a simple value my parents tried to teach me.  Giving.  My parents are very generous people, always giving to those in need.  Sometimes it’s money, other times it’s resources, but mostly it’s their time.  I do not have the luxury of spare time to give to others.  I’m not a millionaire either.  Fortunately, there is a wonderful organization that helps facilitate small financial donations to entrepreneurs in third world countries, that organization is Kiva.sokchan-touch

Kiva’s mission is to connect people through lending to help alleviate poverty.  While I can’t back an entrepreneur here in the states for $25, I can in other countries.  I can make a difference in someone’s life and help them bring their entrepreneurial aspirations to fruition.  I have invested my $25 in a 22 year old woman from Cambodia named Sokchan Touch.  She requested a $700 loan to help fund her weaving business.  I, along with 7 other donors, have donated enough money for Sokchan to continue her weaving business.  I wish Sokchan good luck with her business and look forward to keeping track with her progress.

I urge BoumanBlog readers to look into Kiva.  It truly is a great organization.  We all have a social responsibility to help make this world a better place…for us as well as future generations.  Email me at contact@boumanblog.com if you have any questions about Kiva.  You can also visit their site for more in depth information or to sign up and donate.

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  • Jim Bouman

    Thanks, son of mine.

    We didn’t have a lot to give, compared to the big dogs of philanthropy. But our little bits of time and money donated to strivers and persons filled with hope and confidence in their ability and indomitable will to live and create, made our lives complete, were well worth the effort.

    I’m just back–a few hours ago–from the Cubacaravan (google that in case you want to know the details).

    By the way, Happy Birthday, son of mine. Many more.

    A twenty sixth birthday was–in the late sixties–a kind of breather, a goal half-met. If one (one of us males) got there without having to put on a uniform and go to S.E. Asia to kill some other mother’s son in the name of stopping the dominoes from falling and preserving LBJ’s and Macnamara’s ego/machismo, we wuz one fortunate guy. Fifty-eight thousand other guys (and a few of the girls) we went to high school with, not to mention millions of Vietnamese women and children and grandparents and ordinary working stiffs got killed (collateral damage) in that ugly venture that led nothing but tears and anguish and regret and and a million Vietnam vets in America utterly haunted by what they had done by “just following orders”.

    Half-met goal? If we had ducked the role of grunt in the war, some of us felt an obligation to live a life that would prevent our kids having to do the same insane thing. I’m glad you are living in the world of financing hope and life-changing opportunity for a woman in the third world. I’m with you on this. I’ll send some KIVA investment money to someone else in that world you just opened up for me.

    It’s your birthday present.

    Dad