Loans for the Working Poor

Cleansing the cartoon talk palate ....

Nicholas Kristof's "You, too, can be a banker to the poor" in the March 26 NY Times (available online only to Times Select members) details micro-loans to small businesspeople in Samoa, The Ukraine, Ghana, etc. Kristof's blog entry has some links.

What drove my interest was Kristof's column. Too bad it's sitting behind a firewall. I hope that his blog is not.

If you are developing a small business in these parts of the world, you have no access to credit. There are money lenders, but the interest charges are usury (kinda like the credit card companies or payday loan companies here -- but worse). Sites like Kiva.org have been set up so that you can loan a minimum of $25 to someone who has a small business. Kiva's site lets you see each individual's business needs and the loan that they are seeking.

This kind of personal, small scale helping appealed to us, and we wanted to share it here.