Easy decision made
Occasionally, a post will appear on my Facebook timeline, announcing that I’ve made a loan to someone, somewhere via Kiva. Kiva’s a Microfinance organisation and facilitates loans to all parts of the world. It explains the process in four steps:
- Choose a borrower
- Make a loan
- Get repaid
- Repeat!
We’ve been repeating these four steps for quite a few years and our original $25 has been loaned, repaid and reloaned a number of times and along the way, we’ve added a little more from time to time. As soon as $25 has been repaid to our account, I reloan it, going into the Kiva profiles to choose a project which we’d like to support.
You won’t be surprised to see that I tend to support women who knit,sew or are in higher education. When I bought a new sewing machine, I was glad to help two ladies in Iraq do the same and when we go off on our travels, it always pleases me to identify someone who could do with some help in that part of the world. Kiva send updates on what happens as a result of our loans and it’s good to see how they make a difference.
So when the Kiva statement came through the other day with around $35 in the “bank”, I looked through the list as usual. I hoped to find someone in Burma to support but finding nothing appropriate, I switched my search to the Philippines and added my $25 to the $500 from others to enable Leonicisima to buy some raw materials.
As I completed the loan, my eyes fell on another Filipino lady who was hoping for a loan to buy new fishing nets and to restock her grocery store. “Edna May dreams of improving her life in the future”.
On this Mothers Day weekend, how could I not support Edna May with her work, in memory of my Mum, the only other Edna May I’ve ever come across.
I’m sure she would have approved.
