In yesterday’s post I wrote about the Law of Giving and Receiving and the benefits associated with engaging this Universal Law in your quest to make money online.
I wrote about how if you want to RECEIVE more money in your life, you don’t necessarily have to GIVE away more money.
You can GIVE value to the world in other ways. Money is just one of the ways to activate this law.
I also wrote about how starting a Blog so that you can give to the world by sharing your passions, your wisdom and experience with the world is one of the easiest and coolest ways to activate this law and to get more money flowing into your life.
If you haven’t had a chance to read my post from yesterday, you can read it here.
In today’s post I want to write about another method of activating the Law of Giving and Receiving to help you make more money online.
Supporting Entrepreneurs Worldwide with Micro-Loans
One of the other ways to get support from the Universe as an entrepreneur is to GIVE support to other entrepreneurs!
For the longest time, one of my dreams has been to get to the level of wealth where I can invest in businesses and support the entrepreneurial spirit of people around the world.
There are so many amazing entrepreneurs out there with great ideas, but who lack the financial backing and funding to make things work.
I always thought to myself that once I’m a multimillionaire, one of the ways that I want to give back is to help entrepreneurs get their businesses going.
Most people out there have similar dreams of giving back.
We think to ourselves “Once I’m rich I’ll give back in this way.”
But why wait until you’re rich?
Thanks to new innovations like crowdfunding and micro-loans, almost ANYONE can afford to support the entrepreneurial spirit of others even with the smallest budgets.
For as little as $1 you can make a donation to one of the thousands of Kickstarter projects that are popping up every month.
I’ve supported about a half dozen Kickstarter projects now and plan on supporting many more in the future.
However, in this post I want to talk about something a bit different – micro-loans.
Thanks to websites like Kiva, you can now offer micro-loans for as little as $25 to help entrepreneurs worldwide to start their businesses.
Basically how it works is you make a deposit with Kiva for any amount of money you want to start with.
It can be as little as $25.
And then you choose one of the many people or groups on the website who are looking for loans.
Each loan that is made has a repayment schedule, and the majority of people repay their loans.
Once the loan is repaid you can then take the money and loan it out to another person.
Here are a few examples of a few entrepreneurs I recently supported through Kiva.
#1 – Sarvinoz from Kurgantyube, Tajikistan
This mother of 3 was looking for a $600 loan so that she could buy a computer for her new business – a computer center which will offer different computer services to local people.
This loan is fully funded now, so she has gotten her $600 for the computer.
#2 – Benito Antonio from Chigorodo, Colombia
Benito is a 51 year-old man looking for a $675 loan to start a vitamin and natural supplements business.
This campaign is currently 11% funded.
#3 – Maria Consuelo from Marinilla, Columbia
Maria is a 46 year old mother of three who wants to start a sewing workshop and was looking for $1,675 to buy sewing machines and thread, needles etc. to start the business.
This campaign is also already fully funded.
Why I Like the Kiva Idea Better Than Charity
There are just a few examples of some campaigns I’ve supported on Kiva.
The reason I particularly like the idea behind Kiva is that these campaigns support entrepreneurs who want to better their lives by starting their own businesses, but who just don’t have access to the financial resources you and I might have due to where they live in the world.
The really cool thing is that the Kiva loans are NOT just handouts, they are loans that these people get to pay back over time as their businesses make money.
Energetically speaking, things can get pretty complicated when you’re dealing with situations where people are given a handout, charity, etc. as it can actually hurt them more than helping them by supporting a welfare type mentality.
But with Kiva you’re not just giving someone a handout. You’re just participating in offering them a short-term loan, so that they can start their business, and then pay back the money.
In this way way, you’re sending out positive energy when you participate in the loan process, and you’re also helping them to build their confidence over time as they pay back the loan and feel good about it.
How I Pick Candidates
There are many different ways that people choose who to give loans to on Kiva.
Personally, I go through the candidates and I look for specific common threads between the people who I’m lending money to and situations that relate to my life.
For example, when I was a little kid during one Christmas the ONLY thing I wanted was a computer.
This was during the days when computers still hooked up to your TV and long before there was something called the Internet.
That Christmas, all I wanted was a computer but I was told it wasn’t something my family could afford at that time.
Somehow though, my parents managed to come up with the money to buy me that computer and I remember the amazing feeling I had that Christmas morning.
In my imagination I imagined there being so many different things I could DO with that computer, for weeks before I got it.
Once I actually got it, that Tandy Color Computer was what I actually learned to type and program computers on.
It led me to embrace computers, programming, and all the different ways I’ve made money with computers over the last 20+ years can all be traced back to me getting that computer on that Chirstmas morning.
So when I saw how Sarvinoz wanted to get a loan for $600 so that she could start a computer center business in her town, it reminded me of how awesome I felt when I got my first computer.
By linking my personal experiences with these people’s campaigns and profiles, with each loan I make I am also sending out that money with an incredible amount of GRATITUDE to the Universe for all the support it has already given me in my life.
I believe that money is just energy, and so when I fund a micro-loan by sending that energy to that person, and I wrap that energy (money) in a veil of GRATITUDE I also know that the money will carry with it an energy that will attract positivity and gratitude in their lives.
Contrast that with how most people make charitable donations. Usually they see some commercial on TV where they are made to feel guilty or bad about someone else on the planet starving or dying from some disease, and they feel the energy of guilt and sadness and so the money they donate to these charities also carries with it the energy of guilt and sadness.
I prefer not to donate money to charities out of guilt or sadness for someone else, because that just creates those types of feelings in the people receiving the money.
With Kiva, I choose my candidates carefully and I make sure that when I read their stories and when I look at their pictures I feel GOOD about lending them money towards their campaign.
By doing this, I’m supporting THEIR entrepreneurial venture, and by the Law of Giving and Receiving, the Universe showers me with support towards *MY* entrepreneurial ventures. 🙂
If you haven’t taken a look at Kiva before, you can check out their site here.
If you haven’t taken a look at crowdfunding on Kickstarter, you can check out their site here.
If you want to join my team on Kiva (Team Free You Now) – you can do so at this link.