Visualization of Relief

Take a minute and give a buck. This is the Darfur Wall.  A sort of memorial/donation board.

What I really like about this is that it shows you the difference that you are making in a slight more tangible way.  The number you clicked on lights up very nicely.  While still somber, it’s easier to feel like a small contribution really did go the long way people talk about them going.

800 in line, 790 disappointed*

The PlayStation 3 will be released upon us poor Americans in about 30 minutes. A couple of folks got in line in San Francisco to get their system. $500 or $600 (no game included) later for the first few and the rest will go home without the prize.

Is it worth it? The system I’m getting is $250, with a game, and they made enough of the things that I don’t have to wait in line for more than an hour (and that hour will be mostly meet and greet/nerd observation time and buying an extra controller). Is that worth it?

Funding the World

Kiva is a new web site that let’s you do something pretty amazing: fund an entrepreneur in the third world. I’m not entirely sure how this works yet, but I like what I see so far.

From what I can tell, Kiva has partnered with several small (micro) finance companies around the world that are local to the loan recipients. People needing a loan apply there, which get vetted and forwarded to Kiva. Kiva lets you put money towards the loan amount (as little as $25 regardless of the total load requested) and helps manage the payback process. You also get email notices about how the company you have funded is doing and how the payback is going.

This isn’t something you can make money off of. While the local finance companies charge an interest fee (which must be disclosed to Kiva for them to be a partner), Kiva doesn’t collect and none of the interest is passed on to Kiva users. You do get your original investment back, should the loan recipient pay back the loan (there is a chance they won’t, but all of the loans made through Kiva have been paid back at the time of this entry, according to their web site).

I like the idea of people pooling their relatively limited wealth to help out someone trying to get on their feet somewhere else. I’m not poor by most standards and am wildly rich compared to most of the people in the world, but I still don’t make that much compared to other Americans. But here, I can take a little bit of my wealth and help a fellow out thanks to a good use of technology and some really good thinking from a couple of passionate people.

Does it get better? Probably, but this is pretty damn good.

Kiva

An Invitation

I’ve been thinking about invitations lately. Mostly from a desire to receive them more often, despite regular invitations from my close friends; invitations to movies, to lunch, to talk, to walk, or to simply share space for a time. A perceived lack of invitation, while a reality in some cases, misunderstanding in others, and merely irrational in the rest, lead me to think a bit more about what being invited is all about.

My Name Is…

Welcoming the Stranger is not my number one skill. It actually isn’t even in the top ten. So where as my thoughts on the Familiar carry some scope of practice, my thoughts here are based almost entirely on the actions I see in others and how I would like to be treated when I play this role.

Saying Hello

I’ve been giving the ideas of hospitality some thought lately. Nothing in particular, but as I come across something remotely concrete, I plan on sharing in some fashion.

I have heard many talks and sermons about giving thought to “what it looks like” to welcome people into our (whoever the “our” is) midst. Be it church, work, or society at large, I’ve heard the language in all places in one form or another. Each walk of life treats it differently, and they all fail and succeed differently, but they all seek in some fashion to achieve something of a simiilar goal despite a wide range of reasons.

Most recently, I’ve been struck by the value of simply saying hello.