Posts Tagged ‘charity’

Walking for sick children in Holland

Tuesday, November 30th, 2010

Stefan Le Belle, walking for sick children in HollandYesterday I met a traveler that just arrived to Tarifa a few hours earlier. This 26 year old guy from Holland, Stefan Le Belle, told me that he is walking from the most southern point of Europe’s mainland, which is here in Tarifa, to the North-Cape in Norway. He is doing this both as an adventure and to help sick children in Holland. To be able to do this he has found sponsors that for example donates one euro per day he is walking, which should add up to around 300 euro total for the about 300 days he calculate the whole walk will take. On the way he has a GPS that tracks every step he makes and on top of this he will blog about his trip on his web site. He will also write down every small cost of the trip to make sure that most of the sponsored money actually goes to the children and not to his own expenses.

Because Stefan had no place to stay I let him stay at my place here in Tarifa, and this morning we walked out to the most southern point of Spain to start his journey. The weather was rainy and although it was to foggy to see the beautiful African coast, the two oceans meeting here created a very nice scenery.

For more information about Stefan or to donate money,
visit Stefan’s web site by clicking here

Microloans made easy – Kiva

Sunday, October 4th, 2009

For the last 10 years I have gave money to different kinds of charities. Some year ago I found Kiva (thanks to my mother), an organization which allows you to easily do microloans to a big part of the world where it is really needed.

The website gives you opportunity to browse through the database of people that need a loan. All these loans are for misfortuned people that wants to make their own income through starting an own business, instead of just getting money for the moment. Usually these people can’t go to a regular bank because they don’t have money to secure the loan, they have no credit record as they have never been employed before, or they are not able to fill in the paperwork as they are illiterate.

For each person in the database you will see their business idea and how much they want to loan. You don’t personally have to loan the whole amount to them, instead you put in as much money as you want and other persons do the same until the amount is collected.

When you have loaned out money you will get regular reports from Kiva about your loans and repayments. You are never guaranteed to get the money back, and you don’t earn any interest on these money. As you get your money back, you can relend them to other entrepreneurs, or you can select to withdraw them.

The minimum amount to get started is only $25, so you have no reason why not to do it! This is also a great long lasting present to give to someone.

www.kiva.org