Kiva what? Kiva good!

A great friend of mine gave me the best Chistmas Gift this year! She gave me some Kiva Credit. Say what?? I'm sure you're wondering, so I'll tell you. She introduced me to Kiva.org which is an organization that allows regular people like you and me to lend money to an entrepreneur who lives in a developing country. This money is then used to purchase something to help the entrepreneur get out of poverty. Cool. My friend generously gave me $25 to lend to a Kiva entrepreneur and I chose a group of pig farmers from Cambodia. The money enabled them to buy more little piggies and during 2009 they'll pay back the money. So far the farmers have already made a repayment of $2.07 less than a month since I did the loan. This money can then be re-donated or withdrawn.

There are so many entrepreneurs on the site from around the world looking for that extra little bit of help to get them beyond poverty and to a life of health and happiness and for a very small amount of money you can help too! You can view all of the entrepreneur profiles on the website and then select the one you want to donate to. Just this week more than a million dollars has been donated to help. Isn't it great that there's people on the planet who come up with such cool and innovative ways to do their part to help make the world a better place? Thank you Kiva! And thanks to my friend who so kindly did her part too. Such a great gift of kindness.

If you're curious to know how your online donation gets to the entrepreneur, just watch this video called "A Fistful Of Dollars: The Story of a Kiva.org Loan" created by a Kiva volunteer.


A Fistful Of Dollars: The Story of a Kiva.org Loan from Kieran Ball on Vimeo.

True Love! I love this story.

Back when I worked in radio and did a morning show, I had the opportunity to interview the founder of an animal sanctuary in the States about an elephant named Tina who used to live at the Vancouver Game Farm (now the Greater Vancouver Zoo). Tina had been transferred to the Elephant Sanctuary at Hohenwald, Tenn. and we were finding out about how Tina was doing. It was so cool to find out about how they transferred her (in a semi!) and how she was settling in nicely with the other elephants. It was a great place for Tina to go to live out her later elephant years. Sadly, Tina has since died. BUT! There's another great story coming from the Elephant Sanctuary and this time it's about an 8700 pound elephant and a dog who form a wonderful friendship. Check out this video from CBS News called the Animal Odd Couple....it's so nice. It made me cry. I just love this story. Makes me have hope for our world and makes me happy...and isn't that what life (and this blog) is all about?! Enjoy!