I get by with a little help from my friends

Today I received an email that made me smile. This isn't the first time I've received the email -- a similar message comes every month. And every time it makes me smile. The email is a notice from Kiva that another portion of the microloan I made a few months ago has been repaid.

Photo from Kiva.

This is Hawa Afia. She's 60, a widow and lives in Ghana. She's a fishmonger and sells used clothing from a shed in the local market to help support her family and send her children to school. With the microloan she received from me and about 20 other people, she'll be able to expand her business and buy more fish from the wholesaler.

I was familiar with Kiva for a long time before I decided to make a loan. I don't know what was holding me back. If you've been considering it (or even if you've never heard of Kiva until now!), I encourage you to just do it. It's easy to create an account and you can loan as little as $25. Once the loan has been repaid, you can loan the money to someone else. And every month you'll receive an email with an update on your loan repayment. :)

More water

A couple of people have reminded me of another non-profit group that is building wells in Africa -- Wishing Well. This is a student-led organization with roots at Pepperdine and Oklahoma Christian. Their goal is to bring attention to the water crisis and be a catalyst for action through art, photography and film. Definitely an organization worth supporting.

Today is World Water Day

From Charity: Water:

Unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation cause 80% of all sickness and disease, and kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. Many people in the developing world, usually women and children, walk more than three hours every day to fetch water that is likely to make them sick. Those hours are crucial, preventing many from working or attending school. Additionally, collecting water puts them at greater risk of sexual harassment and assault. Children are especially vulnerable to the consequences of unsafe water. Of the 42,000 deaths that occur every week from unsafe water and a lack of basic sanitation, 90% are children under 5 years old.

From Living Water International:

The United Nations Development Programme estimates the cost of meeting the MGD [Millennium Development Goal, to “reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015.”] to be about $10 billion a year. Again, that is for water and sanitation for half of those lacking. They add that the figure “…represents less than five days’ worth of global military spending and less than half what rich countries spend each year on mineral water.”

I always check out charities on Charity Navigator and the BBB website prior to supporting an organization. I was unable to find any information about Charity:Water on either site. However I decided to include the link because there seems to be enough evidence of the good work that they do. They partner with many organizations, including Living Water International, and have received a lot of positive press. You can also view their completed projects in Google Earth. My guess is that they do not have a report with Charity Navigator or the BBB because they are such a young organization.

Spreading the word

Sometimes Brian calls me a target market because I can be easily persuaded by advertisements. I just think good marketing should be rewarded. :)

But here's a marketing idea worth buying into: a new search engine for finding hotels has decided to use social networking to advertise. And all that money they would have normally spent on advertising, well, they're donating it to a worthy cause. When someone blogs about Hotels Combined, they will donate $20 to World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the Make-A-Wish Foundation, or WorldVision. Or if you don't have a blog, you can become a fan on Facebook and the company will donate $5 to one of the organizations.

Check it out for yourself: http://www.hotelscombined.com/Charity.aspx. And spread the word.

I recommend Hotels Combined and sent $20 to World Vision!