We Help A Bunch Of Quacks In Burma

We all have our soft spots, and two of mine are coming together this week – doing something to help people around the world make a better life for themselves and Peking Duck.

Kiva is a way we can help people around the world out of poverty through the use of microfinance. For example, our family lent these guys US$25, which went towards making up the US$5,825 they need to do what they need. A whole heap of people, from all over the world, will come together through Kiva to make this loan happen for these people.

How cool is that?

In case you’ve never heard of it before, microfinance is a general term to describe financial services to low-income individuals or to those who do not have access to typical banking services. Microfinance is also the idea that low-income individuals are capable of lifting themselves out of poverty if given access to financial services.

Here’s what this group’s Kiva profile had to say about their venture:

“This community is located in Thate Che Village in Myanmar’s Ayeyarwaddy Delta region. The community consists of 30 village customers (23 females, 7 males), and includes five Community Based Organization members (CBOs) who are helping to lead the loans. This new loan will help villagers buy ducklings (each duckling costs $2.70), build duck farms, and buy a boat (the boat costs $40) to look after the ducklings. Some villagers also plan to buy food for ducklings, which costs $14 per packet, and is a week’s feed for 100 ducklings.

Most of the villagers from Thate Che Village earn from crop farms. To have extra income, some cut firewood or bamboo to sell in the market. Some as well plant betel, and for livestock, as the steams are nearby their house, they mostly raise ducks or pigs. Pictured above are the CBOs from this village, named Daw Chu, U Thein, U Nyo, U Kyaw and Daw Tin.

Daw Chu, involved in the picture (first from left), is 43 years old. She is married and has six sons (five are students and one works in the city). She works as a daily worker and sometimes helps her husband to look after the ducks. Her husband is a farmer but he currently has to rent others’ farms, as they have financial problems in buying a farm. She raises ducks as well as some pigs as livestock.”

1 Choose a borrower 

Read through hundreds of borrower stories of people looking for loans to grow businesses, go to school, switch to clean energy and more. Find someone who connects with you.

2 Make a loan

Click ‘Lend’ to make a loan to the borrower of your choice. All Kiva loans are disbursed by our Field Partners who vet and work closely with each borrower.

3 Get repaid

Get updates as the borrowers you support succeed and repay their loans. You’ll see these dollars return to your Kiva account.

4 Repeat!

When borrowers repay, you can use that money to empower another person by supporting a new loan! You can also choose to donate the money to Kiva or withdraw it.

One of the things which works really well for our family is that with Kiva you get to relend the same money over and over as the repayments for past loans come in. For example, in the last few years we’ve personally made over $5,000 in loans with less than $500 in contributions to our Kiva account (which includes $125 in Kiva gifts we gave to friends and about $50 in donations to Kiva itself).

So far 229 people have joined our family over on the Kiva site and made 964 loans (that’s $24,100 worth). If you’d like to check it out and see for yourself how fantastic this organization is, just click over to their site using this LINK.

Come join the warm fuzzies 🙂

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It really does make a difference  Thanks.

“Raising a family on little more than laughs”

This was not a sponsored post. We just love Kiva.