www.johndbritton.com

I'm a Kiva lender, and I believe you should be too. As promised in my previous post, I present to you a second $25.00 Kiva gift certificate.

The gift certificates are just special links you can follow that will give you $25.00 of credit in your new Kiva account to lend to the borrower of your choosing. The gift certificate is available to whomever claims it first.

Please don't claim the gift certificate if you're not new to Kiva, I'm hoping this will get someone new involved.

To claim the gift certificate click this link and follow the instructions to open a new account. Once you've created your account make sure to lend the funds to an entrepreneur, otherwise the money will just sit there for a year before becoming a donation to cover Kiva's operating costs.

According to the Wikipedia Article:

A kiva is a room used by modern Puebloans for religious rituals, many of them associated with the kachina belief system. Among the modern Hopi and most other Pueblo peoples, kivas are square-walled and underground, and are used for spiritual ceremonies.

Similar subterranean rooms are found among the ancient peoples of the American southwest, including the Ancient Pueblo Peoples , the Mogollon and the Hohokam. Those used by the ancient Pueblos of the Pueblo I Era and following, designated by the Pecos Classification system developed by archaeologists, were usually round, and generally believed to have been used for religious and other communal purposes.

Wait a second, that's not what I was looking for. The organization website has a better description:

Kiva's mission is to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty.

Kiva is the world's first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs in the developing world.

The people you see on Kiva's site are real individuals in need of funding - not marketing material.
When you browse entrepreneurs' profiles on the site, choose someone to lend to, and then make a loan, you are helping a real person make great strides towards economic independence and improve life for themselves, their family, and their community. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates and track repayments. Then, when you get your loan money back, you can relend to someone else in need.

Kiva partners with existing expert microfinance institutions. In doing so, we gain access to outstanding entrepreneurs from impoverished communities world-wide. Our partners are experts in choosing qualified entrepreneurs. That said, they are usually short on funds. Through Kiva, our partners upload their entrepreneur profiles directly to the site so you can lend to them. When you do, not only do you get a unique experience connecting to a specific entrepreneur on the other side of the planet, but our microfinance partners can do more of what they do, more efficiently.

Kiva provides a data-rich, transparent lending platform. We are constantly working to make the system more transparent to show how money flows throughout the entire cycle, and what effect it has on the people and institutions lending it, borrowing it, and managing it along the way. To do this, we are using the power of the internet to facilitate one-to-one connections that were previously prohibitively expensive. Child sponsorship has always been a high overhead business. Kiva creates a similar interpersonal connection at much lower costs due to the instant, inexpensive nature of internet delivery. The individuals featured on our website are real people who need a loan and are waiting for socially-minded individuals like you to lend them money.

I'm a Kiva lender, and I believe you should be too. To get you started I've gone ahead and purchased a Kiva gift certificate just for you. Well actually I've purchased two gift certificates, one that I'm posting now, and one that I'll post later. The gift certificates are just special links you can follow that will give you $25.00 of credit in your new Kiva account to lend to the borrower of your choosing. The gift certificate is available to whomever claims it first. But don't worry, I'll post another gift certificate link soon.

Please don't claim the gift certificate if you're not new to Kiva, I'm hoping this will get someone new involved.

To claim the gift certificate click this link and follow the instructions to open a new account. Once you've created your account make sure to lend the funds to an entrepreneur, otherwise the money will just sit there for a year before becoming a donation to cover Kiva's operating costs.

The next Kiva gift certificate link will be posted on Friday, 13 February 2009 between 12:00-13:00 EST. I'm telling you this now to give you an advantage over the other internet dwellers, come back later to claim your gift certificate too!

About a week ago I announced an Olympic Ticket Giveaway. The time has come to announce the winners and runners-up. Although there is no way for me to verify you've done your good deed, I hope that you will follow through even if you didn't win the tickets.

There was a great response, with even better ideas:

• Pray for peace on Earth
• Organize a Couch Surfing gathering
• Give art lessons to friends and family
• Give up metro seats
• Make people smile
• Give English lessons to Japanese speakers
• Organize a fundraiser for the Join Together Society
• Sponsor a Sichuan child
• Help economically depressed municipalities start businesses
• Give technical help
• Spread happiness
• Volunteer at Chinese orphanages
• Be extra nice to the boyfriend
• Organize kids sporting events
• Donate to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
• Lower carbon footprint by using mass transit more
• Do the right thing

I'd like to give a special thank you to everyone who helped spread the word about this giveaway, especially the following:

• Kirsty from NerdyNomad
• Jason from GOOD Magazine
• Christine from Almost Fearless
• Julie from Matador Pulse

And without further adieu...

Winners:

• Joseph (good deed)
• Imran (good deed)
• Saurabh (good deed)

Runners-up

• A. Yellis (good deed)
• Anonymous (good deed)
• TKC (good deed)

Winners have 24 hours to contact me to claim their tickets, unclaimed tickets will be awarded to runners-up.

UPDATE: This giveaway has ended, see the results.

I have a surplus of tickets to the Olympics; rather than scalp them for crazy prices I've decided to give them away free of charge. There are three pairs of tickets available (six tickets total).

The tickets are for Equestrian Events in Hong Kong (A Class) to take place on August 9, 2008. The events will be held at the Sha Tin Racecourse (accessible via KCR).

You don't have to pay me back, but there is a slight catch. I expect you to "pay it forward" by doing a good deed, any good deed.

The tickets are available to anyone, really, anyone... that means you! All you have to do is leave a comment on this post describing the good deed you will do. Be creative, have fun and make sure the good deed is not directed toward me (that would defeat the idea of this pseudo-contest).

I will select three winners and three runners-up on August 6, 2008 and notify them via email. In the event that any of the winners is unable to attend or is unreachable by August 7, 2008 the tickets will be passed down to the runners-up.

Also, please be sure to give a valid email address (it won't be published) so I can contact you if you win.

If you're short on ideas for good deeds here are a few suggestions:

• Make a micro-loan on Kiva
• Host a foreign traveler from CouchSurfing
• Help an old lady cross the street
• Give some free hugs
• Subscribe to Good Magazine, or better yet buy a friend a subscription
• Practice other random acts of kindness

Rules:

• Each entrant can win at most one pair of tickets
• Winners have 24 hours to claim tickets
• Runners-up have 24 additional hours to claim tickets
• All decisions are final