The "I Loan Becauses" & The "About Me's" -- Kiva Has Special Lenders

[Guest]

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[Jill]

        I keep coming across and wanting to share
what strike me as memorable Lender responses to the queries:
"I Loan Because"  and  (What Do I Want to Tell the World)
"About Me."

      Just as with some of the Lender pictures, I think there's a wealth here to be tapped.
So, I thought I'd see if anybody else would agree with me and help keep this thread going.
If not, we can just let this thread fade off into the sunset along with so many of the others.
Either way.....

    The following isn't necessarily The All-Time Best
"I Loan Because" reason I've seen since I've been here,
but it's one I just now came across, and I liked it.

I loan because:     Pure selfishness. Studies show that the fair distribution of wealth reduces crime, pollution, and war and increases things like biodiversity conservation, all of which makes the world a better place to live. And, I happen to live in the world.
http://www.kiva.org/lender/tucker7571


Note: 
     I put this thread in the top half of the Forum page because "lenders" was included as one of the topic areas there.
However, I have absolutely no emotional or any other kind of investment in where it's located, so if somebody feels
strongly about it, tell me,
and I'll move it.

[Peter S]

Well, the most intriguingly concise reason I've come across recently is this:

I loan because: Tikkun Olam
http://www.kiva.org/lender/charles9942

which of course set me a-Googling, and turns out to be Hebrew for the Judaic concept of "healing the world"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tikkun_olam

I manage to learn something every day from Kiva...

P

[Jill]

      Thanks, Peter.

       It's one of my many MOST FAVORITE THINGS about Kiva,
how much the experience of being connected with it, with Kiva,
offers us to learn --
if only we open our eyes and hearts and
want ---- choose to learn.

       I just checked out the Wikipedia link you'd included, curious, myself.
Among the gems I gleaned from the definitions of that phrase I'd never heard of
was that it meant, (so, your Lender loaned because he wanted to be)

"Helping to Perfect the World."

(I guess we wouldn't be here if we didn't all share some of those same lofty aspirations).

    Also, the Wikipedia article included the following, which I found personally, very interesting:

".....the phrase tikkun olam has taken on political, as well as religious, significance.
It is frequently used as a synonym for social justice,
often with the implication that Jews should work toward the development of a fair and equal society
with the same zeal with which their ancestors may have followed Jewish religious law...."

        I was born Jewish.  I was raised Jewish.
If I'm any religion at all now,
many many many years later,
I guess I'd say that I am still Jewish.

     But it's that whole
    yearning, striving and craving for
    social justice
    that I retain and associate
    with any religious connections I still feel.

      And, parenthetically, I do know and I'm beyond-expression grateful
that my religion (again, if I have any religion at all, now)
did not and does not have
the corner on the "social justice" market.

I have very little question in my mind that almost all of us, here,
irrespective of  our differing religions, cultural or any other perhaps distinguishing backgrounds,
are here because we want that same SOCIAL JUSTICE,
fairness, equity, "equal opportunity" to prevail throughout our world.

    So, thanks for the post and the link.
It was pretty fascinating for me.

[RichardF]

Peter & Jill, the ideas of "Tikkun Olam" and "social justice" got me thinking of "dharma."  "In its most frequent usage (in the sphere of morality and ethics) dharma means 'right way of living', 'proper conduct', 'duty' or 'righteousness'."

Just to stay within the "rulz," here are some lenders who agree.

Neil and Matthew & Michael

[Peter S]

Richard, thanks for the link to the Wikipedia article on Dharma.   Demanding stuff, I will return to it when not suffering the after-effects of too much       the previous night, as is sadly the case right now.  (Silly me, I'm old enough to know, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, and what goes around comes around..)

Jill, thanks for teasing out the "social justice" theme.  It's a phrase of course that is pregnant with all kinds of ironies in the context of what's happening in Israel and Palestine.  I saw this the other day http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6960953.stm and just wanted to cry.

Anyway...     I simply love this sweet uncomplicated reason for lending:
Our English teacher gave us $20 seed money and told us we should find a way to make a difference in the world with this money. We could add to the amount but only if we earned the money. Between the five us us we made an extra $30. We decided to invest this money with Kiva and it's clients. We will continue to reinvest our money for other clients of Kiva!
http://www.kiva.org/lender/thereza4609

Kudos to the students, and to that teacher.  He/she has imparted a much more valuable lesson that the correct usage of it's and its.

Peter

[RichardF]

(Silly me, I'm old enough to know, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, and what goes around comes around..)

Hey Peter, that's the karma part! 

[Jill]

Hey Peter,
      I'm right there with you
   with the sense of irony, but mostly sadness
given the political situation in Israel/Palestine, Palestine/Israel.
I will NEVER, for the life of me, be able to understand why people can't find a way to live in peace.
       
       (Of course, precisely while I was writing that, my mind pointed at a particular Political Leader I know (with a "sic" attached to the word, Leader),
and I realized that it's the so-called leaders, usually, and not the general populace, who get the insanities started or at least, certainly,
exacerbated a million times over.  End of the 4:40 in the morning Sunday political commentary....).

    Funny, you should select the particular "I Loan Because" reason you did 
(which I thought was very neat, too).
I had just been thinking, yesterday, about how highly represented,
numerically speaking,
teachers are, among our Lenders.

    And I'd been thinking how great that was,
because for every teacher that gets hooked,
if they get half as hooked as I have and
if they feel even half the way I did and do
about the "riches" there are to be bestowed and that they want to bestow
upon "their" kids ...
Kiva and all its wonders and incredible learning potential
being a super super case in point,
it's like -- for every teacher we/Kiva can snag,
that's like almost a guarantee that there are going to be many many many more
of their students (and maybe/probably fellow teachers, staff)..... influenced, hooked, and soon to follow.

     I'm sure that this is more a subject for one of the School threads that have already gotten started here,
but it seems like it would be a really good idea to put some emphasis into
finding ways to bring more teachers into KivaFriends.

     And
as so many have said in the school threads 
(I'll try to go grab some of their "addresses" in a couple of minutes to post here),

    It would be really good for more people to brainstorm ideas
as to how Kiva can be utilized both in the classroom and school.

EDIT:   There may be other school and classroom discussion threads,
            but these were the ones that came up just now
            when I did a quick search:

School Lending to Promote Global Understanding, Microfinance, and Young Kiva Fans
http://www.kivafriends.org/index.php/topic,680.0.html

School Service Project Ideas
http://www.kivafriends.org/index.php/topic,410.0.html


    Back to the original thread title...
I like these "I Loan Becauses."
Not always, but sometimes,
it seems like they offer you a window
through which to look
into people's hearts.

[Jill]

     I just now came across a teacher, "Foley," who probably will inspire kids
like the kids who were inspired in Peter's post.

http://www.kiva.org/lender/foley5475

     I don't think I'll do this very often,
but.... because she/he? included a website
which happened to include an e-mail address,
I just now wrote her.... inviting her to check out KivaFriends.

   So, we'll see.

     (A thought --
       If each Kiva Friend -- well, if each of those who were willing to --
       would write at least one Kiva Lender teacher
       who lists a means by which we can contact them
       and would invite them to check out Kiva Friends---
       well, maybe we could get a bunch more teachers, and by extension, their kids "on board").

[Jill]

    Wow!
    I don't think five or ten minutes have passed.

     I just now found that I had ALREADY received a response
from that teacher, Foley, I just wrote you about.

    You can imagine ... I feel very pleased. (calm, quiet, unostentatious, self-assured smiley guy)

     Since I'm one of the ones who has been "yipping" the most
about us trying to get things better organized here,

       See, the thread, Navigating the KivaFriends Forum,
http://www.kivafriends.org/index.php/topic,911.msg6869.html#new
I will post Foley's response in the

School Lending to Promote Global Understanding, etc. thread,
http://www.kivafriends.org/index.php/topic,680.10.html
noted above.

[Jill]

    Just now came across Howard, in Florida.
Sounds like a very inspirational guy.
http://www.kiva.org/lender/howard6463

     Since he included an e-mail address,
I'm thinking about writing him and inviting him to join KivaFriends.

But -- with that and with my invitation to Teacher Foley, above,
I think that that will be the end of my KivaFriends Recruiting Efforts for now
and would like to pass that baton to as many of you as might be willing to grab hold of it.

     I've got a question:

    When people include websites on their Lender pages --
which websites almost always have a "contact us" component,

     Do You Think It's Intrusive-- Too Much Like Spamming
     for one or the other of us to write some of those people
     trying to get them to join KivaFriends?

     If you don't think so .... and think it would be worthwhile for us to try to connect with them,
does anybody have any thoughts about an approach where we might
share and spread "the work,"
so that it wouldn't be overly burdensome for anyone who was willing,
but might prove to be pretty productive??