Kiva loan August 2011

Whoopee!  I have been able to make another loan through Kiva as a result of sales in my little shop.  I am incredibly grateful to all that help me do this and it makes all the hard work worthwhile.

The latest loan, the third now, has been given to Sanoat.  She is 38, married and a mother of 5 children who lives and works in Yavan, Tajikistan.  Her husband works abroad: with a husband who also works away from home for brief periods of time, I cannot imagine the difficulties of trying to raise 5 children alone. 

I was moved by her request to buy seed to grow the vegetables she raises and sells to make a living, and whilst her photograph is beautiful and lush, I felt it also depicted a woman who looked a little overwhelmed by her surroundings.  I am honored to be able to help support her request.

When making a loan, the hope is that it will be repaid as agreed so that it can be lent to someone else in need, but it is always possible given the dire situation of some of the borrowers, that circumstances may work against them making it impossible to repay the loan.  That has indeed happened to the first loan made to a farmer in Kenya. This loan is currently delinquent (Kiva's word) which I am assuming is due to the severe drought.  I hope to receive more information and if/when I do I will post it here.

'Do not loan more than you can afford to give away' is very wise advice and I make these loans in that spirit.  If the money comes back, that's wonderful because it means the loan improved someones life as it was meant to.

Kiva loan July 2011

I was delighted to be able to make a second loan through Kiva yesterday.  With so many wonderful people asking for a little help it can be hard to pick just one, so the way I do it is to find a person and story that speak to me.  I know it's not scientific, but I've always found that the only decisions I regret are when I don't follow my gut.  I really do believe that the eyes are the windows of the soul, even when you can only see them through a photo and when I saw Anthony's, I felt an immediate connection and am honored to be able to support him.

Antony Ndirangu has practiced farming in Ndunyu Njeru town in Kenya for the last 11 years. He is 44 years old, married to Mirriam and they have five school-going children. He's a great example of how these microloans through Kiva change lives: Antony hopes to become a leading farmer in his area, and is working towards this steadily with our help. He has had 3 loans previously and repaid them all as agreed, so it was an easy decision to support him in his request to buy a dairy cow to boost his farming income. 

Here is the receipt for that donation:

This has been one of the best organizations I've ever donated to.  If you'd like to help others help themselves, I encourage you to check out www.kiva.org for yourself. 

Thank you to my customers for your support of my little Etsy shops, and therefore your support of people like Antony.

Capturing a screenshot

Having just made another Kiva loan, I wanted to copy the receipt to display here.  Easy thought I.  Not at all!  The receipt had been emailed to me and I wanted to copy the whole thing and that required taking a screenshot, pasting it to 'Paint' then removing the private link to my account, 'snipping' the receipt and saving it in jpeg to my 'documents' - phew!

To a slightly less than expert techy, this proved quite the challenge.  I use Windows and here's how I did it:

Press ALT and Prt Sc - this copies the screen (in my case an email)
Open 'Paint' by pressing Start > Accessories > Paint
Press Ctrl + V - this pastes the graphics file into Paint
Click the little pink eraser and 'rub' out any private information (account details for example)
Open the 'snipping' tool by pressing Start > Accessories > Snipping
Press 'new' then put the '+' in the top left corner
Press the left mouse whilst moving the '+' to the right, then down
You'll see the info you've snipped quite easily as it's in focus (the rest is blurred out)
Save to a folder of your choice remembering to save it in JPEG format from the dropdown menu

And that's all there is to it!

You can see the result of this effort in the next post which is about the latest Kiva loan made to a Kenyan farmer to buy a dairy cow. 

Kiva donation February 2011

An unwritten law of the universe states that when you help someone else, you will gain far more than you can ever give ... and you'll do a little happy dance every time too :)

In 2010, I donated to Save the Children, Hope for Haiti Now, The Big Climb Seattle for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, Breast Cancer Research and Breast Cancer Awareness.

So far in 2011 I've been able to give a $25 microloan to Kameri Ole Mpuumei, the Kenyan farmer shown above, who is married to Ndama. He asked for a loan to buy maize seed and fertilizer to grow and sell his crop for profit. He is described as a rigorous man who, through this support, will be able to educate his 7 children and work towards building a permanent home for his family.

Please follow this link if you would like more information, or are interested in making a loan yourself http://www.kiva.org/