Malta - British Expat Forum

Stuart has just posted about Kiva (Adverts board). This looks like a wonderful way to help to lift people out of poverty via microloans.

Given the international focus of Kiva, I think we should try to get the whole of British Expat involved rather than only the British Expat Malta forum. I'll add a piece to the BE Editor's blog about it (or more likely tell Dave to do it ) and see if we can create interest in supporting this very worthwhile cause.

great idea - I'd be very happy to contribute either as an individual, or even better as part of a britishexpat.com community joint scheme - either way, I'm happy to put $25 into it

We'll add $25 too.

Balance $50.

I guess my next step is to create a British Expat group on Kiva so people can pay in directly to the group funds on the Kiva website. I'll keep you all informed.

You know it really doesn't take much to change lives. In some cases a few quid to give someone a start is all it takes.

I see someone has already started a team called British Expats. Given that this is also the name of our competitor's website, if I set up a team called British Expat it's bound to lead to confusion. Any suggestions?

BritishExpat.com Team?

would you be allowed to call it

britishexpat.com - Malta forum
or just
britishexpat.com

no harm in a bit of publicity for the website at the same time

I don't think we should restrict our efforts to just the Malta forum. This is relevant to people worldwide.

Yeah, I'll try britishexpat.com and see if they allow it. 8)

OK - here's the URL to join our team.

http://www.kiva.org/team/britishexpatcom

We're still learning our way around but at least the team is there now, so please join us and start lending.

I've joined

Thanks, Mark.

As far as we can figure out, each person in a team individually chooses the entrepreneur(s) they want to lend to. We're currently looking at some in Cambodia. It's very hard to choose.

Microloans are a very successful method of helping people - the Gramin Bank in Bangladesh being a prime example.

As far as we can figure out, each person in a team individually chooses the entrepreneur(s) they want to lend to - thats what it seems to me - perhaps Stuart knows if it can be done otherwise, as I'd like to be part of several loans, rather than only funding one.

loan made

I guess collectively we are part of several loans. After all it's teamwork. The fact that we each choose who to lend to is a fairly democratic way of allocating team funds.

As you say, though, maybe Stuart can throw some additional light on the matter.

Yes, the beauty of the system is that you can choose who to and what you want to loan, and it all gets summed in the group total to give a bit of team spirit.

The other great thing is that a lot of these loans actually get repaid and end up back in your Kiva account, so you can lend them out again!!

I'm also a flying spaghetti monster group member ( www.venganza.org ), a somewhat disparate quasi religious sect, (the members are called pastafarians), which was formed to oppose the teaching of ID in schools in the US. Sorry Kay you might want to edit that, it could be regarded as proselytization!

I will lend a further $100 on behalf of the first person that recognizes me on Gozo from my photograph on the expats Kiva group website.

Keep lending!!

What a great scheme! I have joined team and made my first loan.

Thanks for telling us about it.