Micro Finance

www.kiva.org

Go to it. Lend money to poor people in the third world so they can start businesses. this is the kind of social activism that I love, the kind where we look for real solutions instead of just throwing money at problems and hoping they go away. The site was featured in the nytimes but the article is one of their times select so I've reposted:


The New York Times
Nicholas D. Kristof.
For those readers who ask me what they can do to help fight poverty, one option is to sit down at your computer and become a microfinancier.

That’s what I did recently. From my laptop in New York, I lent $25 each to the owner of a TV repair shop in Afghanistan, a baker in Afghanistan, and a single mother running a clothing shop in the Dominican Republic. I did this through www.kiva.org, a Web site that provides information about entrepreneurs in poor countries — their photos, loan proposals and credit history — and allows people to make direct loans to them.

So on my arrival here in Afghanistan, I visited my new business partners to see how they were doing.

On a muddy street in Kabul, Abdul Satar, a bushy-bearded man of 64, was sitting in the window of his bakery selling loaves for 12 cents each. He was astonished when I introduced myself as his banker, but he allowed me to analyze his business plan by sampling his bread: It was delicious.

Mr. Abdul Satar had borrowed a total of $425 from a variety of lenders on Kiva.org, who besides me included Nathan in San Francisco, David in Rochester, N.Y., Sarah in Waltham, Mass., Nate in Fort Collins, Colo.; Cindy in Houston, and “Emily’s family” in Santa Barbara, Calif.

With the loan, Mr. Abdul Satar opened a second bakery nearby, with four employees, and he now benefits from economies of scale when he buys flour and firewood for his oven. “If you come back in 10 years, maybe I will have six more bakeries,” he said.

Mr. Abdul Satar said he didn’t know what the Internet was, and he had certainly never been online. But Kiva works with a local lender affiliated with Mercy Corps, and that group finds borrowers and vets them.

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The local group, Ariana Financial Services, has only Afghan employees and is run by Storai Sadat, a dynamic young woman who was in her second year of medical school when the Taliban came to power and ended education for women. She ended up working for Mercy Corps and becoming a first-rate financier; some day she may take over Citigroup.

“Being a finance person is better than being a doctor,” Ms. Sadat said. “You can cure the whole family, not just one person. And it’s good medicine — you can see them get better day by day.”

Small loans to entrepreneurs are now widely recognized as an important tool against poverty. Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize last year for his pioneering work with microfinance in Bangladesh.

In poor countries, commercial money lenders routinely charge interest rates of several hundred percent per year. Thus people tend to borrow for health emergencies rather than to finance a new business. And partly because poor people tend to have no access to banks, they also often can’t save money securely.

Microfinance institutions typically focusing on lending to women, to give them more status and more opportunities. Ms. Sadat’s group does lend mostly to women, but it’s been difficult to connect some female borrowers with donors on Kiva — because many Afghans would be horrified at the thought of taking a woman’s photograph, let alone posting on the Internet.

My other partner in Kabul is Abdul Saboor, who runs a small TV repair business. He used the loan to open a second shop, employing two people, and to increase his inventory of spare parts. “I used to have to go to the market every day to buy parts,” he said, adding that it was a two-and-a-half-hour round trip. “Now I go once every two weeks.”

Web sites like Kiva are useful partly because they connect the donor directly to the beneficiary, without going through a bureaucratic and expensive layer of aid groups in between. Another terrific Web site in this area is www.globalgiving.com, which connects donors to would-be recipients. The main difference is that GlobalGiving is for donations, while Kiva is for loans.

A young American couple, Matthew and Jessica Flannery, founded Kiva after they worked in Africa and realized that a major impediment to economic development was the unavailability of credit at any reasonable cost.

“I believe the real solutions to poverty alleviation hinge on bringing capitalism and business to areas where there wasn’t business or where it wasn’t efficient,” Mr. Flannery said. He added: “This doesn’t have to be charity. You can partner with someone who’s halfway around the world.”

The Waverly Inn really is that stuck up...

It was 5:50(pm you masochist, pm...) and we were wandering the west village on what was possibly the most beautiful day yet of this year. It was one of those days filled with the brilliant electricity that only manhattan has: rampant biking, beautiful women walking their smartly dressed dogs(I mean really, smartly dressed dogs? really?), Lucy Liu shooting a scene just outside the waverly inn and me desperately needing a drink. The air of the early evening had that spice of body odour/cologne/trash that seems like a summer refrain to everyone who lives here.

We ducked into the aforementioned inn and the bartender helpfully(assholishly?) told us that the bar wouldn't be open till six. When the mercury is broaching 71, ten minutes might as well be an eternity so we moved on to some pedestrian bar with an overlarge bit of branding and a respectably priced margarita. next it was l trains and hipster wb busses ran for after frenetic purchasing of pacifico and cigarettes. Booklyn was the order of the night. We were already running late but lucky for us we were dealing with a den of agnostics who clearly believe timeliness is next to godliness. Fabulous.

At booklyn we learned how to make folding books and coptic stitches and we learned that bringing imported mexican beer makes you popular anywhere you go(like I didn't already know that). Somewhere along the way it became a good idea to visit the alluring bar conveniently located on the corner. Add equal parts ski-ball and guiness by the pitcher stir well and serve chilled. some frenetic young band played on a makeshift stage and things were generally splendid. Following all that was a borometer test of the neighborhood by means of Jonny Walker Black. Results: affordable and fun. I wish a train would have taken me back to manhattan but in this case it was a surly cab driver. So finally we ended up at some bar on 8th where I began to remember my own mortality and decided to head home. The Path served as a bitter reminder how much more fun life would be if I was a starving artist squatting in a brooklyn warehouse. At least I'll always have Lucy Liu outside the waverly ass fucking inn...

Wanna turn your MP3's into Ringtones?

I just found a great little site called myxertones that allows you to upload mp3's and then pick a section out of the song to turn into a ringtone that you can then send to your cell phone. It's super easy and best of all, free.

200 MPG car for $20k

This appears on the wired website:

200MPG For Reals! Aptera Unveiled at TED
We've been hearing about the Aptera, the ultrahighmileage supervehicle from Accelerated Composites (aka Aptera Motors) for more than a year now. Steve Fambro and his merry band of geniuses over at AC let the math do the talking when it came to the design so that the car would be as aerodynamic as possible. Pair that with a super-efficient diesel hybrid engine, and the result is 200mpg. It's only fair to note that they originally predicted 330mpg, but we're cool with 200. It's also supposed to be pretty affordable (around $20,000), thanks to some magical carbon fiber fabrication process that AC won't really talk about. The actual prototype was unveiled at TED this past weekend in Monterey, and it looks like Batman's girlfriend's car. We just hope this thing actually goes into production instead of winding up in some museum. More pictures after the jump.

Yes, we are officially living in the future.