Blog Action Day 2008 - Kiva - Poverty2Prosperity.org - ONE

Today is Blog Action Day 2008 and the topic this year is Poverty. I'm having a hard time coming up with a unified theme to write about so, instead, I'm just going to mention a few things that I find fun and interesting that also help alleviate poverty.

1. Kiva (http://www.kiva.org)

Kiva offers personal micro-lending. If you've got the time and inclination, you can manage your own portfolio of micro-loans (as little as $25 each) to the working poor around the world. For example, have a look at my own Kiva lender portfolio where you can see my portfolio of 168 loans:

http://www.kiva.org/lender/saabnet

2. Poverty2Prosperity (http://Poverty2Prosperity.org)

Okay, so let's say you don't have the time to spend managing your own Kiva portfolio but you are interested in this concept of microlending. Poverty2Prosperity.org can help you out. This is a non-profit (501c3 pending - California Corporation) that I founded this year that does two things. 1. It provides a Perpetual Fund. This fund is a permanent fund at Kiva that can never be withdrawn and that means the money donated to this fund will forever be used to make microloans through the Kiva lending platform. Donors can specify lending preferences to be followed such as agriculture, women, or a particular country. Since its inception, P2P has made 161 microloans.

3. The ONE campaign (http://one.org)

And finally... well, not much to say... I ordered a ONE campaign wristband recently and now wear it proudly...One.org aims to make global poverty and Millennium Development Goals a priority.

Hey, you can do something about poverty. It's easy now.