Hacktastic!

This is Edith. She’s 23, lives in Peru with her parents, and makes and sells homemade ice cream to help her family. Through Kiva yesterday, I loaned her $25 USD to help her buy more ingredients. Today, she’s raised all the money she needs. (I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream?)

Kiva allows one to make loans to people in third-world countries to help them improve their businesses. The loans are interest free and the repayment statics are pretty good. Excepting issues where the value of the U.S dollar changes and causes discrepancies with the exchange rate, you could conceivably loan money to many people with the same $25 (or whatever you loaned in the first place).

I like organizations like this because they help people help themselves.