I Live Sweat launches Kiva Lending Team

I’m pleased to announce the launch of the I Live Sweat Kiva Lending Team. For those of you who are unaware of Kiva, it’s a micro-lending platform which allows users to team up to lend money to entrepreneurs, in order that they might use that money to advance their businesses, and help lift themselves, and their communities, out of poverty.

Check out the video below to learn more about microfinance. To read about the Kiva model in more detail, click here.


Kiva from Luke Harris on Vimeo.

I’ve been using Kiva for a little under a year now, and I’ve made four loans so far. Three of those loans cost me $25 each, but the fourth was made up of funds that had been repaid from the first three. In this way, cash can be loaned and reloaned, allowing a relatively small amount of money to help several small businesses over time.


(Photo by Abby Gray)

This is Kokou. He’s a tailor from the great rugby-playing nation of Togo. He used a loan of $700 from one of Kiva’s field partners, Women and Associations for Gain both Economic and Social (WAGES), to buy a sewing machine and an overcasting machine, to make his business more sustainable. You can read more about Kokou here.

Kokou is just one of literally thousands of people who’ve gotten access to funds to aid their businesses through Kiva. Like the video above says, this isn’t the whole answer to poverty in the developing world, but I fervently believe that it could be part of the solution, and that’s why I’ve set up the I Live Sweat Kiva Lending Team, so that readers and friends can join together in trying to help people out with a bit of much-needed cash to establish a better life for their families and communities. Kiva Lending Teams allow users to work together, adding a sense of community to the system, and helping users focus their efforts on particular goals.

I hope I’m not being overly idealistic here, but if there’s anything I’ve learnt from years of superhero comics and punk rock records, it’s that those who are able have a moral responsibility to look out for those less fortunate than themselves, and give them a leg up when they ask for it. Or as a great man once said…

“It’s time to take the humanity back into the centre of the ring, and follow that for a time. Greed… it ain’t going anywhere. They should have that in a big billboard across Times Square. Without people, you’re nothing. That’s my spiel.” - Joe Strummer

I really hope you lot check out Kiva, and the I Live Sweat Lending Team, and join me in trying to put some spare cash to good use.

Andy

PS. There are more I Live Sweat projects with a philanthropic bent in the pipeline, so watch out for them. Although ideas will always been the core focus, I want to make I Live Sweat the best that it can be, and I think fundraising is a big part of that. So do the people working with me on these projects. Stay tuned!