Today I bought myself a gift certificate from Kiva then I redeemed my gift by donating $25 to a family in Cambodia to repair their house. That’s a picture of the hubby.

I heard about Kiva by watching one of the founder, Jessica Jackley, give a talk on Ted.com.

The whole idea is about microloans to help poor people start or strengthen their business or repair their house or send their kids to schools. These are loans so they repay the money. Only they do so very slowly. The interest rates they give to the partner bank are ridiculously high, at least 25%. But that is because it costs a lot of money to run these loans and it has to be profitable for banks to be interested in doing it. The people who get the money have no bank account and often live in the middle of nowhere and the bank agents must go to each of them to get the money back. Once they have repaid, the money is refunded to my Kiva account so that lend it to someone else! I like that!