A great gift... without leaving the house!

You know those Target ads on TV (at least I think it's Target) where gifts keep giving way to other gifts in a creative, continuous chain? This program is kind of like that, but crunchy. A San Francisco based organization named Kiva allows individuals to give microloans to individuals who are seeking them around the world. So in $25 increments you can give support in someone's name to a dairy farmer in Peru, a food bodega in Lebannon, a clothes seller in Kenya, a bike repairman in Ghana... lots of people and businesses and places to choose from. And then your loan is repaid. At which point you (or in the case of a gift, the gifted) can loan the money to someone else or just withdraw the funds.

My husband's family has a system set up where you only buy one gift for everyone in the extended family and the recipient rotates every year. This year I drew the impossible to buy for relative... you know, the wealthy minimalist. He doesn't want anything, and what he does want he can buy a much nicer version of than we ever could anyway. So we got him two loans on Kiva to individuals whose businesses are in his lines of interest.

And you get updates on the recipient's business and the progress their making (or not making) with their loan, too.

For the duration of the holidays, I'm going to post a banner about their work on this blog.