John Green explains micro-finance.
The vlogbrothers are quite possibly the best popular channel on youtube. The channel is 6 years old, was one of the first massively popular youtube channels, and does quite a bit of what John and Hank Green call "decreasing world-suck." They are the founders of Project for Awesome (P4A) and have the biggest group on kiva.org—Nerdfighters! Kiva (and an organization like it called Opportunity International) is what I'm here to talk about.
Kiva and Opportunity are organizations for micro-finance, which is when people with relative class privilege, act as tiny, interest-free, one-person banks for people, mostly in the developing world, who don't have access to banking. You can contribute by making out loans to small businesses in other countries and/or by donating to kiva itself. The coolest part is that there's about a 98% payback rate, so you'll get your money back and be able to re-donate it! The idea is that it surpasses corruption both in banks (which rob businesses with interest rates) and in governments (e.g. in countries where the government will steal donated money, like Haiti), and instead goes directly to the individual.
There's some argument about why Opportunity is a better organization than Kiva, and it is ethically, but it doesn't have nearly as much social networking power, so I've chosen to use both. The things that are better about Opportunity according to http://awomansinvestment.blogspot.com/ and word of mouth are:
- It better targets people living below the poverty line
- It does business training in addition to loans, which increases sustainability
- They offer micro-insurance and micro-savings to people living below the poverty line
- They're more experienced
THREE MILLION DOLLARS. THAT IS THE POWER OF INTERNET (SL)ACTIVISM
Image: A graph with time in months on the x-axis and dollars loaned in hundreds of thousands on the y-axis. It is titled "Kiva Lending Team: Nerdfighters" with the subtext "A Common Interest team since Sep 2, 2008", and indicates that the graph feature is in Beta. The graph is split by continent, with North America at the top, then Central America, then South America, then Africa, then Middle East, then Eastern Europe, then Asia, then Western Europe, then Australia/New Zealand, then Oceania. I'm not sure whether this indicates the continent receiving or giving the donation, because North America is at the top, but Western Europe is at the bottom, so unless there are just scads of donations going to Mexico, that doesn't make a lot of sense.
Image: A graph with time in months on the x-axis and dollars loaned in hundreds of thousands on the y-axis. It is titled "Kiva Lending Team: Nerdfighters" with the subtext "A Common Interest team since Sep 2, 2008", and indicates that the graph feature is in Beta. The graph is split by continent, with North America at the top, then Central America, then South America, then Africa, then Middle East, then Eastern Europe, then Asia, then Western Europe, then Australia/New Zealand, then Oceania. I'm not sure whether this indicates the continent receiving or giving the donation, because North America is at the top, but Western Europe is at the bottom, so unless there are just scads of donations going to Mexico, that doesn't make a lot of sense.
It's a never-ending circle of wealth sharing.
And you know how I love wealth sharing.
Eh? Eh?
(The joke is that I am a socialist. That is the joke.)
And you know how I love wealth sharing.
Eh? Eh?
(The joke is that I am a socialist. That is the joke.)
Image: The "enter" button of an older-looking desktop keyboard, but instead of "enter," it says "Money back" with a hand holding U.S. currency.
- It better targets people living below the poverty line
- It does business training in addition to loans, which increases sustainability
- They offer micro-insurance and micro-savings to people living below the poverty line
- They're more experienced
- It makes no profits
Image: Opportunity International's logo, reading "Opportunity International: Giving the Poor a Working Chance". There is an image of an ellipsoid above the text, which is blank except for latitudinal and longitudinal lines. The ellipsoid sits inside of what appears to be a maroon "O" drawn in marker.
The perks of Kiva are:
- It's more popular
- It's stronger at social networking and has a broader community
- It's more user-friendly
- It's more sustainable—Opportunity exists because it's CEO had preexisting wealth, while Kiva runs on a "suggested donation" (that is, admittedly, a little high—it's CEO makes an embarrassing amount of money per year).
Image: Kiva's logo, which reads, "KIVA: loans that change lives". The K in Kiva is made to look like a tree. The words are dark green, enclosed in a light green curvilinear square.
Maslow's hierarchy of needs dehumanizes the oppressed.
The hungry may need food...but that doesn't mean they need love any less.
Image: Maslow's hierarchy and "Maslow 'rewired'" side-by-side. The original hierarchy has "biological and physiological" at the base, then "safety", then "belonging and love", then "esteem", then self-actualization", and changes from green to orange, bottom to top. The revised hierarchy has a red circle in the middle reading "connection", then four surrounding circles around that circle, which are connected by lines(but the surrounding circles are not connected to the middle circle). The surrounding circle at the top is yellow and reads "esteem, reputation and competence"; the circle on the right is orange and reads "safety, order and certainty"; the circle on the bottom is light green and reads "community, belonging & love"; the circle on the left is dark green and reads "food, shelter & sex". Each version of the hierarchy is enclosed in a curvilinear square.
The hungry may need food...but that doesn't mean they need love any less.
Image: Maslow's hierarchy and "Maslow 'rewired'" side-by-side. The original hierarchy has "biological and physiological" at the base, then "safety", then "belonging and love", then "esteem", then self-actualization", and changes from green to orange, bottom to top. The revised hierarchy has a red circle in the middle reading "connection", then four surrounding circles around that circle, which are connected by lines(but the surrounding circles are not connected to the middle circle). The surrounding circle at the top is yellow and reads "esteem, reputation and competence"; the circle on the right is orange and reads "safety, order and certainty"; the circle on the bottom is light green and reads "community, belonging & love"; the circle on the left is dark green and reads "food, shelter & sex". Each version of the hierarchy is enclosed in a curvilinear square.
The only thing that's missing, for me, is the ability to micro-finance within the U.S.—particularly because I just learned about the Pine Ridge American Indian reservation, where people experience poverty similar to that in countries we consider "developing." I'd like to enact my leftist leanings within the U.S., as well!
Seriously though. Go forth and redistribute your wealth!
