During today's entrecard drop fest, I wandered over to see SolSisters favorite, Rayela Fibers. You all might remember her from Crown Thyself. She's got a great guest post for last minute ethical gift ideas. My favorite is a gift certificate to Kiva, a website that is dedicated to microfinance loans in the developing world. The recipient can then choose one of the many entrepenurers on the site to invest in. Once the money is repaid, you can reinvest in another entrepenuer or take it out of the system. Kiva let's you invest as little as $25 to help someone with the will, but not the means, to raise themselves up out of poverty and see a better tomorrow. Because these are LOANS not gifts, the recipents have an interest in working hard to make themselves successful.

$25 is so little to most of us, but it goes very far in Africa or any other of the many far flung corners of the world.

From the Kiva website:

We Let You Loan to the Working Poor

Kiva's mission is to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty.

Kiva is the world's first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs in the developing world.

The people you see on Kiva's site are real individuals in need of funding - not marketing material. When you browse entrepreneurs' profiles on the site, choose someone to lend to, and then make a loan, you are helping a real person make great strides towards economic independence and improve life for themselves, their family, and their community. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates and track repayments. Then, when you get your loan money back, you can relend to someone else in need.

Kiva partners with existing expert microfinance institutions. In doing so, we gain access to outstanding entrepreneurs from impoverished communities world-wide. Our partners are experts in choosing qualified entrepreneurs. That said, they are usually short on funds. Through Kiva, our partners upload their entrepreneur profiles directly to the site so you can lend to them. When you do, not only do you get a unique experience connecting to a specific entrepreneur on the other side of the planet, but our microfinance partners can do more of what they do, more efficiently.

Kiva provides a data-rich, transparent lending platform. We are constantly working to make the system more transparent to show how money flows throughout the entire cycle, and what effect it has on the people and institutions lending it, borrowing it, and managing it along the way. To do this, we are using the power of the internet to facilitate one-to-one connections that were previously prohibitively expensive. Child sponsorship has always been a high overhead business. Kiva creates a similar interpersonal connection at much lower costs due to the instant, inexpensive nature of internet delivery. The individuals featured on our website are real people who need a loan and are waiting for socially-minded individuals like you to lend them money.