This year I continued making micro-loans to people all around the world through Kiva. Although it wasn’t as easy as in previous years I still managed to grow my fund – plus birthday and Christmas contributions from friends and family – Thank You!

If you’ve not heard of Kiva, it’s a way to help finance loans to people around the world who have no access to other forms of borrowing. Often they need help with basic things I take for granted such as a sanitary toilet, access to clean water, electricity, schooling, or medicine. When they repay the loan I can lend it to someone else. Obviously there are losses – if there’s a hurricane in Haiti that loan you made is probably not going to come back in full, or maybe at all.

I really like the idea of helping people to help themselves, and that by adding a little each month I can actually begin to contribute in a useful way.

I started lending through Kiva in 2012 and by the end of that year I’d made 30 loans. This year it was 203. This month I’ve lent money to farmers in Kenya, Myanmar, Colombia and Tajikistan, households in Vietnamese and Cambodia, market traders in Toga, Philippines, Pakistan and Liberia, and a Mexican needing medicine. It feels good.

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