Hello friends.

I know I spend a lot of time and words on books and music and I hope you enjoy reading my thoughts on them. But another thing that is dear to my heart is helping those that are less fortunate than us. Any of you reading this are beyond blessed. You have shelter, food, and enough money to have a computer or smartphone to view this webpage. This puts you and I as some of the richest people in the world. Because of that, I think we should be aware and be generous to those that don’t have the chances we did because of something as simple as what country they were born in. I wanted to take a few minutes to tell you about an amazing organization that I am a big supporter of: kiva.org.

This simple video really explains everything. But to really see the effects of lending money and then relending it after being paid back, I wanted you to see my statistics. I joined kiva in 2008 and here’s the impact I’ve had:

So in just 5 years, I’ve helped small businesses around the world with loans up to almost $1,000. That’s insane! And I’ve only put in $159 but I keep reloaning the money. It’s really an incredible concept with such an amazing impact. With most loans, you get updates from the person you’ve loaned to. Here’s an example:

Afghanistan

Ghulam Rasool who is a quilt sewer wants to thank the Kiva lenders from the support. After the loan she bought quilt sewing materials and now she has more clients. She can observe a big change in her business and her monthly income.