What If . . .
- What if a $25 loan could get someone’s business started?
- What if a $50 loan meant the difference between having food in your store to sell and closing down forever?
- What if you could win a Nintendo Wii simply by doing the right thing?
Teens of the South Bay, we challenge you to change a life. Make a "micro loan" and invest in someone’s future.
Kiva, a nonprofit organization, matches micro lenders with borrowers in the developing world, enabling them to start or grow their businesses. Through Kiva’s website you can search borrowers’ profiles, learn about who they are and what they want to do and find entrepreneurs throughout the world whom you would like to support.
For more info, attend the upcoming lecture by KIVA founder Matt Flannery:
Matt Flannery: Helping Through Empowering
November 19, 2009 at the JCC
In 2004, Matt Flannery witnessed the power of microfinance firsthand while on a trip to East Africa. He started a company called Kiva Micro Loans. While filming interviews with small business entrepreneurs he was able to see and hear how small grants of only $100 – $150 had been used to build small businesses which could then support a family. In October 2005 Kiva announced to the world the first peer-to- peer microlending website. Since its birth Kiva has grown from a small personal project to one of the world’s largest microfinance facilitators, connecting entrepreneurs with millions of dollars in loans from hundreds of thousands of lenders around the world.
How to Participate
- Go online to www.kiva.org and sign up to make a micro loan of $25. (get your parents’ permission first)
- Then join the lending group “1community1book” on the Kiva website.
- Now you are ready to begin searching for ways to save a life.
- Look through the different profiles.
- Select an entrepreneur that you are interested in supporting.
- Then make your loan.
How To Win a Nintendo Wii: Take the Kiva Teen Challenge Essay Contest!
Answer the following questions in your essay. First prize essay wins a Nintendo Wii.
- Who did you pick for your loan?
- Where does that person or people live?
- What is their business?
- Why did you pick that business to support?
- Describe how it felt to search through the profiles.
- Has this experience changed how you see the world around you and if so how?
- Are you going to continue lending money or are you pulling out and why?
Submit all essays to the APJCC Center for Jewish Life and Learning via email: CJLL@svjcc.org
Essay deadline is March 15th , 2010.
