Giving to Get: The Spread of Gratitude

Part of my changing my life and improving who I am, my major project for the next year -- reconciling who I want to be with who I am -- means giving more to other people.

That got started today with my joining Kiva.org after seeing it on Oprah this morning. The principle of it is this: You take a small amount of money -- anything between $25 and 500 -- and you LOAN it to someone to start their dream business. It's a loan, not a gift, and more than 99% of the loans are repaid.

You log on, choose entrepreneurs from a region of the world you're interested in helping, do your donation, and wait and see as it all comes to life. You get repaid monthly, and you can either take the money back or use it as "Kiva credit" to keep the ball rolling by helping someone new.

There are those who believe small programs like this are how we're going to change poverty in our world. I signed up and helped begin changing someone's life in less than three minutes.

It'd be awesome if some of you could contribute to others on Kiva, especially in the spirit of Thanksgiving down in the States today. This is the woman I started helping today with just a small loan of $25, what I can share right now, and she needs another $525 to make her dreams be realized. Why not change a life today?

(Ed. Note: It's 10 hours later and the woman below has received all her loans! She's in business! KICK ASS. If you contributed after reading about it here, please tell me so I can feel warm and fuzzy inside!)