kiva
as the year comes to an end, it's time to think about your third pillar, your 13th salary, and in particular about donating some of your 13th salary and bonus to charity (after all, you want to be able to deduce it from your taxes, right?). this whole process of choosing the right organizations to support and deciding about the actual amount to donate is always a bit awkward — some people argue that donating money is as selfish as keeping it all to yourself, you just donate to feel good. however, to me it's quite clear that, as first worlders, living in one of the richest countries, sharing some of our wealth is really important.
as an alternative to "plain" donations, i quite like the idea of microcredit lending. one organization which is pretty popular in this sector is kiva (i originally came across it via ben). kiva's principle is simple and follows the good old paradigm of "helping people to help themselves": enterpreneurs (read: poor farmers, retailers, cleaning ladies) sign up with a business idea, lenders (you) make a loan using your credit card (ideally through paypal, which is waiving all transaction fees), kiva transfers the loans to a local partner which interacts with the enterpreneurs, and over time, this partner collects re-payments and returns them to kiva, which then returns them to you.
as usual, a good summary about microcredits in general, kiva-like websites in particular, and also about the nobel peace price awarded to the idea of microcredits in 2006, can be found on wikipedia.
