Person-to-person foreign aid

here's one of the best ideas i've read in quite some time...

Kiva (www.kiva.org), a recently launched web-based non-profit that allows peer-to-peer (p2p) microloans. Kiva's p2p network enables ordinary people to loan small sums of money through PayPal to needy individuals without interference from a bank or microfinance institution (MFI). For the first time, anyone can make a loan of as little at $25 to an indigent entrepreneur in East Africa. In only a few weeks, the rapidly expanding website has facilitated enough microloans to fund over 30 businesses in Uganda, revolutionizing the concept of microcredit.

so simple, so sensible, so elegant in concept... an excellent use of internet technology...

On Kiva's easily navigable site, interested lenders can click the Businesses tab and read about the ambitions of these microentrepreneurs. Through pictures and mini-biographies of each small business owner, lenders can learn how their microloans will be used and select their loan recipient.

For example, scrolling the active businesses, you can read about Simon Okiror, who has borrowed $500 to fund a medicine shop in Uganda.

Okiror lives with his wife and seven children in Soroti, where health centers simply don't have enough medical supplies for their ailing patients. After selling three goats he'd raised at home, Okiror was barely able to get his shop afloat. With his $500 loan through Kiva, Okiror has stocked his store with ample amounts of medicine for the community. In fact, his business has been so profitable that Okiror has already repaid $50 of his loan. All loans can be monitored on Kiva's site through a private account that a donor creates, and more than one donor can contribute to the same recipient.

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