Meet Jorge Raul. Jorge has never met me, nor have I ever met him, but I have met and seen many faces of Jorge in my recent trip down to El Salvador on a medical mission with Mayo Clinic and Operation Blessing. When you realize that much of the world has it much worse off than you, suddenly life takes on a new perspective. Take for example my experience working with our doctors examining the many old ladies who came into our free rural clinic in El Salvador complaining of muscle fatigue and bone pain. Muscle fatigue was simple: despite their old age, they were still working hard in the fields in the scorching sun to scratch out a living. The bone pain? Easier to diagnose than to treat. These ladies, despite their best nutrition, were calcium deficient and are developing osteoporosis. "Increase your calcium intake" we advised them, advised them until we realize that their nutrition consisted of only rice and beans, day in and day out."milk is too expensive," they told us. Cheese was a fantasy.
Such societal disparity was shocking to me as I worked in the mountain villages of El Salvador where just a short 40 minutes away was the commercialized hub of San Salvador where I had just dined on sushi at Benihana's the night before and was comfortably lodged in our air-conditioned hotel with wifi, a flat screen TV, bottled water, and a daily hot breakfast. Suddenly a knot of guilt tightened across my belly as I tried to swallow the fried chicken, biscuit, and slaw that was being served to me during our lunch break at the rural clinic. "These starving people are so graciously watching me stuff my face with chicken," I thought to myself, "I wonder if these children have even tasted chicken before?"
While we took no measures to provide ourselves with any extravagance on this trip, in contrast we were basking in luxury compared to the lifestyles of these people whom we were serving. Our $26 a night hotels and "U.S. comparatively half-priced" Benihana's dinners suddenly carried a lot more superfluous cost when we learned that these people living in the hills had to buy their bottled water on the few weekly dollars that somehow they generated through their agriculture or industry.
I could go on complaining about the deprave social condition that we as humanity have let ourselves stoop to, that such circumstances that I've described actually exist, but in continuing to do so, I lend my voice to nothing more than the numerous politicians, the bureaucrats, and the institutions that talk the talk of change and do little in effect to make a difference.
So let us talk about making a difference. In 2006 Muhammed Yunus, a Bangladesh economist was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in microloan banking. Gambling against human self interest, Yunus took a chance at the novel notion that poor people nonetheless being poor were still good people. These were people who didn't want to remain poor, Yunus thought. They were products of social circumstance and were suspended because of no means of upward economic mobility. So, Yunus thus started the Grameen Bank in which he started loaning outmoney to the indigent that had a need for money - a plan for industry, or an idea to help themselves out, and what he discovered was a phenomenon that is growing globally today.
There are people like Jorge out there who have an idea, who have an industry, who have a means to get themselves out of the poverty that is tethering them down -- but they lack the equity, the first chance, and the gamble of trust that most financial intuitions operate by when they calculate the odds of their institution ever seeing the money they loan again. Here's were you and I and Kiva.org come in.
Kiva, a non-profit organization which works with other global NPO's and NGO's find people like Jorge who have a plan and have a need. In fact Jorge even had a bio:
Jorge is 42 years old and he lives with his wife and children. He has three children that are the ages of 15, 9, and 4 years old. They are all in public school. Jorge sells chicken and his wife sells food, and they used to always have leftovers. They always used to have to pay people to take away the leftovers until Jorge got the idea to raise pigs and to feed the leftovers to the pigs. He now has 180 pigs. Jorge needs $525 to buy live pigs and food for them. Since Jorge has been in the group Finca, he has progressed economically. Also, he has learned to be punctual in making his payments on loans for his business. Jorge’s dream is to buy a truck for his business.Merging Yunus's microloans ideas with the global reaches of the internet, Kiva has harnessed the individual's capacity to make a difference. Philantropy now crosses all boundaries as individuals can help individuals directly for as little as extending a $25 loan to someone in need. The beauty of this social experiment is that Yunus's gamble paid off. To date, over 98% of his loans are repaid, and Kiva through their affiliate partners boasts similar returns.
Though this is but a small step in the marathon humanity runs against poverty, it's one small step that I've taken to make a difference directly in someone's life. You can choose to donate separately to Kiva if you wish, but Kiva, unlike many other institutions that will skim your donation, assures you that 100% your money is going where you intend it to go.
Foregoing a meal at Benihana's today may be a small sacrifice that I make, but with Kiva.org I hope that that sacrifice can make a bigger difference in Jorge's life. I invite you to learn more and make a difference at:
