Matt and Jessica Flannery were living in Africa when they saw how enterprising people were when it came to setting up businesses with almost no money. It gave them the idea to set up an on-line micro-loan system that has so far allocated $10m to budding entrepreneurs around the world.

As a former vet of the Band Aid era, I can wholeheartedly say that Kiva is cool, sustainable and not in the least way a charity. They have my vote, and my money.

Yoh, kiva, a perfect formula to make a difference

With the help of Paypal, online organisation Kiva, has bridged the gap between the haves and have nots but want to do something about it. At last, they have made it easy for us comfortable individuals in the West to finance micro-loans for enterprising folks throughout the Third World. That's right, you finance and get back your money, (not donate) and you can support a small business ventures overseas on a proper business footing.

Check out the Kiva home page and all becomes clear. You look through a list of people all round the world with projects in need of funding. Pick the person you want to support. In a few clicks your $25 is transferred to Kiva and immediately allocated to that person via Kiva's partner micro-loan company in the field. Congratulations, you just helped launch a small business venture.

And most important, for all the cynics out there, this is not a donation into a vacuum deal. You will get your money back when the loan is repaid at the end of the year! What is not to like?!!

Risk v reward

In principle, you get your principal "loan" back in full. That makes for a hell of a twist, or a massive deviation away from a traditional charitable donation. Participating in a Kiva project is a bit like sending back a Remembrance Day poppy or a Red Cross badge at year end and getting a full refund!

Kiva are very business-like though, and ask you to be aware of the inherent risk of a micro business loan. ie

Of the $2,027,035 of loans with completed loan terms, the default rate is 0.2%. However, past repayment performance does not guarantee future results. When you lend money, you may lose all or some of your principal. You should be aware of the different types of risk and find the right loan option for you, with respect to repayment risk and social return. Quote.

In the current atmosphere of foreclosure and delinquency rates in America, risk is not quite the word I would be using.

Kiva community

Stick around the site, and not only can you see exactly where your money has gone, but you can keep uptodate with progress from the real human being benefitting from the loan.



The program is all about linking and participation, so you also see the other side of the micro-loan equation, as in the lenders, their circumstances, their motivation to lend some cash in $25 blocks. Yes $25 blocks! one or several as part of an on-going plan, as you wish.

Check 'em out. Oprah has and she liked it, and so did News Week... and Mrs Ed and me are enthused too. Enough said. And if you are looking for ideas for Christmas, forget my online stores for meaningless humor books and DVDs. Send some Kiva gift certificates. They are all very iTunes-esque - as in, easy and personal, in an online gifting kind of way. Click on, it is addictive and about the most fun you can have with a keyboard.

K is for change

I have a feeling this Kiva deal is going to change the world, seriously. Kiva will prove to others who doubt the motives of the West, that us everyday folks aren't all tarnished with a myopic multi-national corporate brush. When these hands-off micro loans take root, it won't take long for the word to spread around the globe that everyday folks in America and Europe do have a heart, don't give money with strings attached, and do like to see other people doing well off their own efforts.

Remember, Kiva is cool and show-cases real people in need of a few hundred bucks' loan so they can provide for themselves forever, not just a day. This is the classic lend them money for fishing lines and they can eat for ever deal. Clickety click.

(Now, where's the map. I need to double check that Namibia is where I think it is.)

According to this report about cooking with sound found in Ars technica, a consortium of UK universities plus Los Alamos laboratories have developed a Sterling engine. Essentially, with little energy input, this device will generate heat at one end of a tube, refrigerated air at the other, and electricity from the middle. That is quite a tube!

What problem is the tube trying to solve exactly?

It all sounds like a dream come true for the Third World, where wood is still the main source of heat for cooking, and the only cold storage available to most people are containers wrapped in wet canvas sacking hanging in the shade.

Will the Sterling tube solve the problem in the Third World?

In theory, this Sterling idea should make a difference to the quality of life of its users, because it is simple in construction and presumably cheap to build and run. But as usual, the practice probably won't match the theory on a national or global scale - and you have to think global, seeing as 70% of our fellow humans are in the same sorry shit hole.

Third World development programs inaction

What happens is, a Westerner has a great idea, it seems simple to them, it is cheaper than anything in their own society, they see poor folks overseas with a need... obviously they have solved a major problem? Not on your life. From day one, the ratio of radical ideas to successful uptake is very low. But lets forget the Canadian camel breeder who wanted to teach nomads how to breed camels! Let's be optimistic.

Assume people are hot for a new technology that could actually make their lives better not different. Bring it on! The experts flood in, money is no object to launch a project, funds are available for locals to get in on the scheme. Early adopters run with it, headway is made locally. Hunky dory. But then a couple of things happen.

Maintenance issues

As a project gathers momentum, bad donors deem it a success too early on and decide it is time to pull out. Enthusiasm soon wanes when the local users become saddled with an ongoing maintenance expense that eats into their already small budget. Hence donated machines break once never to be repaired. Sorry bwana, I am not ungrateful or unwilling, but I need money for food not to buy parts. I am thinking of a doomed Landrover services station program in Africa as I write this.

Changing minds issues

Another scenario is where the enthusiasts need to spread the word, which means involving the general populace, which means more funds required. The usual oversight is not the lack of money, (reliable donors have funds covered) but the use of money. They don't grasp the difficult part of the inappropriate technology scenario. Just because there was isolated interest in the first place to do things different, "experts" forget that any change from the norm for the general public is nothing to get excited about. Basically, we have enough going on without making room for just one more thing.

If you don't change, there will be trouble

Before we think of patronizing silly little Third Worlders, ie they are stupid not to do whatever it takes to adopt a tube that gives them a combo fridge and cooker and generator and saves the environment too, the image I have in my mind as I write this, is the latest revelation that many US school authorities are stopping ther laptops for students programs!

It all sounded fine and dandy giving kids this incredible tool to learn with, many educators were enthused to the point of no return, but it fell on its face in many instances. There was no culture of on-line learning, just gaming and chatting. And not enough teachers outside the hard core adopters are tech inclined, and so it just spiralled into an expensive waste of time for many authorities. They gave them back without going hungry. And that is an example of apparenty appropriate technology for a high tech society!

Too much technological change is inappropriate

If that is a poor illustration of the issues of first world solutions for third world society, then imagine a program where instead of laptops, schools have been offered some sort of high-tech nano info absorption device that teaches them twice what they can learn now. It requires a little bit of setting up, and half the time at school but the killer part is that students have to follow a weird timetable that totally disrupts their current routine at home. The likelihood of that taking off?

That is the same scenario when Third Worlders, people like you and me, but 100 times poorer and cut off from the world we know, are presented with a cool solution to their problems. It rarely takes off.

Going full circle, if tech god, Bill Gates, were to get behind the Sterling tube and make it do what his software couldn't in the US, and change the minds of the parents of hungry young kids, and get this neat technology into homes without turning homelife upside down, then we may be on to something.