"Tithe" to social and environmental causes.

So I helped someone else. Or sometwo else, I suppose.

We’ve had a little chunk of money sitting in the “to contribute” pile for a couple of weeks now, so I went out and made 2 more Kiva loans. That makes 5 separate loans so far.

I tried to be geographically diverse, so the latest recipients are in Tajikistan and Viet Nam. (The previous loans went to Nicaragua, Benin, and Tanzania.)

Behold the power of planning ahead and setting some money aside: We were able to donate $100 as a couple to the Democratic Party. And when it comes back to us (via the Minnesota Political Contribution Refund program), we’ll be able to donate it again!

We made another Kiva loan this morning. That means we’re above average, since we’ve now got $100 in play (average: $89) on 3 loans (average: 2.3 loans).

I’m not sure this should be on my list. My husband is the one actively managing the donations. I find out that progress has been made when he posts an update to his list. I don’t feel like I have much to do with it, other than to try and spend less.

That said, I believe our second Kiva loan has gone into active status.

Our second Kiva loan is now at an active status.

Our first Kiva loan went to an active status, so somewhere in Nicaragua a fruit vendor is on the way to improving her children’s lives.

This feels like a karmic reward for helping fund a second loan (to a group in Tanzania) while waiting (impatiently) for the first to become active.

Now we’re into the swing of things. As these loans get paid back, we can re-loan the “same” dollars to snowball our positive impact.

I guess I was hoping for a little too much instant gratification from Kiva. The loan we jumped on is still in a “raised” status, which means that enough people have contributed so that the full loan amount ($1000 in this case) is there, but the loan hasn’t actually been made yet.

So she’s still running a fruit stand with no walls and a plastic tarp ceiling while the funds to improve her situation are there. I sure wish I knew when the closing was…checking in every day is just silly, but I can’t help myself.

I should have mentioned Heifer International as a cause that our family likes to donate to. They give life-sustaining gifts of livestock with a “pay it forward” philosophy that means the donations we give are just the beginning of a whole lot of good in the future.

And for those who hadn’t put it together yet, renaemarie is my personal muse and beloved bride of more than 16 years. (So if our entries seem to cover a lot of the same ground, that’s no coincidence.)

Haven’t been able to straighten out the deposits yet, but we went ahead and donated a trio of rabbits through Heifer International ( http://www.heifer.org/ ). We also put $50 into play at the micro-loan site Kiva. ( http://www.kiva.org/ )

Detailed numbers and plans need to be worked out to make this more automatic, but I think these contributions meet this pay period’s requirements, as we sorta-outlined them.

Yay!

To be honest, Rick was the proactive one about this. I caught him on Kiva, which inspired us to do the rabbits.

Well, we’re now Kiva lenders. This is something we’ve been considering for a while, and it seems like a terrific way to share the abundance we enjoy with someone who just wants a chance to work to make their own dreams happen.