Still behind on your Christmas shopping? Hate the shops? Here's an easy solution.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

For the past few years I've been giving gifts from http://www.heifier.org to family and friends. This is a great way to do something for the developing world whilst simultaneously giving your loved ones a laugh about receiving a goat for Christmas. Now as much as I love and respect heifer.org, these couldn't generally be considered fun gifts. Giving the gift of goat is all well and good, but people want to have *fun* with their presents. So over the past few months I've been experimenting with giving gift certificates from http://www.kiva.org. For those of you who don't know, Kiva is a microlending site. You buy the gift certificate for someone, and they get to decide which of the various developing-world entrepreneurs registered on Kiva receive the money. And if all goes well, you get your investment back and get to re-invest it in another entrepreneur. Reading through all of the profiles of individuals or groups looking for funding can be a lot of fun, and best of all YOU get to determine where your money goes. Your gift certificate recipient can choose to use the money to fund something in which they have a personal interest, or a group whose story moves them. And best of all, as a last-minute present-buying slacker, this requires very little effort! If this sounds at all interesting, check out their website and click on "Kiva gifts."

And in case you were wondering, I have nothing to do with the site. I just love it. People seem to get great enjoyment out of the whole process of investing, repayment, and reinvesting - all for a good cause. :-)

Merry Christmas.

[Oceansaway]

1. there's a DU Kiva Group too

for anyone interested......

[gateley]

4. Thanks! nt

[bajamary]

2. Love Kiva

I've been a Kiva supporter for a few years now. It's a great group. Glad to know that there's a DU Kiva group.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

Peace.

[gateley]

3. Great ideas -- thanks! nt

[mopinko]

5. i was just, 10 minutes ago, talking to DH about giving my daughter a llama.

we are thisclose to buying plane tickets to vegas for christmas. our adult children need a kick in the ass. one especially. dh and i were just saying it would fix her ass to just get a llama from heifer. we have given teachers heifer shares in the past.
awesome, awesome bang for the buck.

[Zoeisright]

6. Love Heifer - we give a gift from them every year.

[girl gone mad]

7. I gave Kiva gift certificates to my family several years ago.

But only one them ever actually redeemed the certificate and loaned the money, and that was my great-grandmother. lol. I guess the rest of my 20 to 40-something relatives couldn't figure out how to log in to the website and punch in the number or they just didn't care enough about the $50, or they didn't understand they would get the money back when the loan was paid off (even though I thoroughly explained that to them).

My 90 year old g-granny loved it, though. She sent me e-mail updates on the loans she was giving and how much they had repaid, complete with photos, for years. :rofl:

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

8. I actually applied for a job with them a while back.

But I didn't have the right qualifications and the pay was shit (go figure.) I'm hoping people will actually put the gift certificates to use, and I intend to keep on them to do so.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

9. Kick. n/t