Stop and Wonder

I think I mentioned in a previous post that I'd recently read "Banker to the Poor" by the latest Nobel Peace prize winner. It's about making loans to the very poor so that they can break out of their cycle of poverty. Really most people just need enough for the initial supplies for their product and they're off and running. The only people that would lend such a small amount do so at exhorbitant interest rates and banks won't even touch a loan that small with no collateral.

Well, last night I had an idea. It's strange because it really came to me out of the blue. It seems that a lot of times my ideas come from a long chain of different thoughts, but this one really just hit me. Let me lead into it a little though. The other day my Peace Corps friend, Darren, was over writing an e-mail to his friends and family for donations to build latrines in his village. Personally, I find it ridiculous that he should have to do that. The government sends them out to these places and then doesn't give them money to do anything.Anyway, we were discussing the fact that people are more likely to donate money if you could tell them specifically where and to who their money is going. That's why his e-mails included pictures and price lists. I completely understand why that is, and obviously the save the children people who send you a picture of the child you're sponsoring also understand this. It has something to do with feeling connected with the people, you want a face to know that it's not going to some corporation who's going to spend 80% of your money on "administrative fees".

Some of you may already guess where I'm going with this. I had the idea for a web site that would allow poor people asking for small loans to be matched with people who want to lend them that money. Obviously it would need the same type of bank workers that the Nobel prize winner uses at his bank, Grameen bank. These people would explain the process, find people who want loans and what their business ideas were. The bank person would then post a picture of the person along with a description of their business plan and the amount they need. The lenders would then buy credit in the bank, which they could then loan to this person, or whomever else they felt inclined to loan to. As the person repaid the loan, the lender would receive credit back in their account along with some interest. They would then be able to make loans to other people, or perhaps even another larger loan to the same person.

This way the borrowers and lenders have a sort of relationship. I imagine that every 3-6 months or so they would have a communication exchange on the how the project going etc. The lenders will always be have the money they put in, and probably more assuming their borrower repays the loan(The Grameen bank has a 98% repayment rate). So the lender can keep lending indefinitely and they can always purchase more credit in the bank to give more loans or bigger ones.

To me this attacks the problem of poverty from both sides. Certainly allowing the poor to lift themselves out of poverty is an obvious part, but the wealthy must also be accepting of these people. We(because I am certainly one of the wealthy even though I have nothing) have a tendency to not really see these people as people. They are simply "the poor", some amorphous blob of people that we rarely if ever see. I suspect many people still believe in social darwinism, that if these people really deserved and worked for it, that they'd have money. Once you've seen an old woman carry 5 gallons of water or a massive pile of firewood on her head for who knows how far just to be able to drink or eat, you know they're willing to work. You really just have to give them some credit!

I envision giving credit to people as something that others could give as Christmas gifts to others. They use the money to find people who need money within the range that they've been given. Then as the loan is paid off they can give other even bigger loans because of the interest. It would truly be the gift that keeps on giving.

So, that's my idea. As usual I'm using you all as a sounding board. I want to know what you think. I've already sent an e-mail to Grameen bank to get some feedback from them. A website like this is easily within the scope of my web development prowess. It seems like it could be incorporated in with their current banks, but it might be better off with it's own system. Anyway, I'll let you all know what they say, but don't forget to leave a comment and tell me what YOU think.

Update

Gayle Bowerman from Baltimore posted in the comments a site that does basically what I've described above. You can check it out for yourself: http://www.kiva.org.

As happy as I am that it already exists, part of me is a little disappointed. I had been fairly excited about the idea, but now the wind is gone from my sails. The only real differences was that I thought the money should be a permanent donation that you couldn't withdraw, but you'd still earn interest on it. They have it set up so that you can withdraw your money but without interest. It would have be one or other, I would hate to think people would try to make money off the poor. The only other difference is that I imagined somewhat smaller loans, theres are all in the $800-$1000 range. I was thinking of people who just needed maybe a couple hundred dollars with some of the more advanced people needing more.

Anyway, it's not really big enough differences to spawn a completely different site. I'm sure they could use help with everything they're doing though. Obviously if I'd never heard of it, their marketing could use some work. I'll probably just write it off as them being geniuses as well and wait for my next brainstorm to strike.

Posted by Tao at 09:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (27) | TrackBacks (0)

   I'm a fairly impulsive person and I've been trying to reconcile a couple of forces within myself. In my last post I was dismissing the idea of life on a sailboat as escapist and leaning towards an organic farm instead. It occurred to me that that plan is also escapist. My days would certainly be filled with more interesting tasks and I'm sure it would be fulfilling, but I'd still be escaping from the world or what I see as my worldy responsibility.

   One of the forces is the fact that I don't want to depend on this system, economically, politically, or otherwise. That leads me to want to be self-sufficient, which inherently leads me to an escapist reality. The other force wants to take an active role in changing the system so that everyone can depend on it, which necessarily means an offensive route which simply can't be done alone so self-sufficiency just isn't an option.

   I kept trying to tell myself that I could do both. I could use my web skills from basically anywhere. Since that would be my main tool in any sort of effort for change why not do it from a sailboat or an organic farm. I would take a defensive position and then hurl my ideas from there, but no matter how I looked at it, I knew that I would not be nearly as effective unless I were actually on the front lines. So what it comes down to is fight or flight, and I know that I will never be content unless I do my damndest and stand up for what I believe.

   So my revised plan is this. When I get back to the states, instead of hiking the appalachian trail, I'll apprentice on an organic farm until August when I 'll hopefully start attending grad school in Baltimore for web design. I'll use my thesis project there to make a website, but it will be less of a website and more of a tool for community organization. That is, unless someone does it before me. Either way I'll offer my skills to moveOn and other web projects that work for social change afterwards.

   I'll still learn to sail at the sailing club in Baltimore and I'll be close to Maya in Boston. I don't see why I shouldn't still develop sailing and farming, I'd like to do both later in life, but only when I'm not using them to insulate myself from the world. It feels like I'm taking in account the two forces, going with the active offensive tactic now, but still preparing for a more self-sufficient life after I've given it my all at change.

   Anyway, I feel better writing this out. I'd been a little depressed feeling like both the plan to farm and to sail weren't going to be fulfilling and now I was back to square one. This new plan feels like I'm reconciling the two sides of me and I may be putting off my pull to sail and farm, but I'll be able to satisfy that by doing the farming apprenticeship and taking sailing lessons during school in Baltimore until I'm really ready for that.

Posted by Tao at 11:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBacks (0)

   I’ve really just been too busy to write a blog for the last...has it been 3 weeks? 4? I’ve lost track. The weeks seem to fly by here. Whenever I do get a chance to get to the Internet I’ve usually got a set of things I’m looking up, I check my e-mail, and that’s it. I’ve begun a practice of just saving every page that seems interesting or like it might have the info I’m looking for onto my memory stick so I can take my time and read through it later on my laptop. It works alright until I find a link on a page that I’d like to open, but since I haven’t saved the link page it don’t work. This is all besides whatever point I was angling at, there’s no apologizing in blogging.

   Besides being busy during the weekdays now that all of our main projects have kicked into high gear, we’ve had time to sort of plan out what we’re going to do when we get back. It may seem soon to be thinking about it, but time here is flying and we’ll be back in like 8 months. Our plans have me really excited about the future, so I’m going to share those first, then I’ll get to an update on our current projects.

   We’re getting back at the beginning of March, and since neither of us have any plans because we were expecting to be here for another year beyond that we’ve decided to do something that’s got me really pumped. We’re going to attempt to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail. It’s around 2,200 miles from Georgia to Maine, and since we won’t have jobs, apartments, or other responsibilities hanging over us, it’s the perfect time to do it. It takes roughly 5 months to hike it all going about 15 miles a day. Since Christine wants to start grad school in August, it’ll give us just enough time.

   Although there aren’t a lot of expenses to hiking the trail besides the initial gear purchase and food along the way, it still comes out to be a couple thousand each. Not really that bad for 5 months, but we still need to earn that before we leave. To accomplish that I’ve started doing web design for my padre and we’re just going to start setting aside whatever money we get for our birthdays and Christmas for it. I think we’ll just be able to get there.

   I’ve also been doing a lot of reading about organic gardening and renewable energy, and I really think that at some point in the future I’d like to start an organic farm on our old commune land in Missouri. The thing is that I don’t want to be tied down all the time to it, so it’s something I’d like to do after I’ve gotten some more adventuring out of my system. It doesn’t stop me from planning and taking not of interesting techniques and tips. I’m always thinking about different ways I could make my own power, sell the vegetables through a website, preserve water, etc..

   Since that’s a ways in the future I’ve been doing more research on my web design sailboat idea. I found some really interesting stuff for portable devices that desalinate ocean water, which would mean I wouldn’t have take fresh water with me. I also found this awesome wind generator thing that can be flipped around and switched to water mode to make even more power while you’re actually moving.

   On the down side I found out that satellite internet doesn’t really work at sea. The problem is that the boat is constantly moving and so it can’t aim at satellite easily. There are some systems set up for cruise ships, but cost something like $40,000. There’s also something called Irridium that just has so many satellites that it doesn’t matter where your satellite dish is pointing it’ll hit a satellite. The problem is that it’s extremely slow, like 1/6th the speed of a modem, on top of that it costs $6-7 per MINUTE. There is however a slightly lower tech solution. It allows you to send and receive e-mails, weather reports, and can send GPS positioning, but you can’t browse the internet or anything like that. Really that’s all I would want for while I was at sea. As far as the web design I could do it how I’m doing it now, by designing it on my laptop setup as its own web server and then take the web pages into a cyber café on a memory stick and upload them when I’m in port.

   My plan is to just start working on web design stuff after we get done hiking to save up money for a down payment on the boat and equipment. I was thinking I might move to coastal town so I could either start taking sailing lessons and/or apprenticing at a sailboat repair place to learn how to do it on my own. All the time doing web design, building up a library of code that I can use while I’m on the boat to make the pages. Once I get enough money to get the boat I’ll probably move on to it and find a marina that has wireless internet and work and practice sailing. I figured once I’m ready I’ll go up and down the U.S. coast, and then head around South America using all this hard-earned Spanish. Then I’d head up to the west coast, then across to Asia and from there around the world. It’s a pretty wild dream, but I really don’t think it’s out of my grasp by any means. Once I get done with that I’ll probably be ready for the farm.

   Well now that I’ve gotten all that out, I can come back to the present. Our projects are all happening to varying degrees. Some are turning out better than others, eso es la vida. So I’ll start with the things that are going good. We’ve now had 4 meeting with our Ecology Club and its going great. We’ve been teaching them about ecosystems, food webs, all kinds of stuff. The idea is to get them to appreciate the environment first, and then we’ll start studying all the environmental problems and hopefully they’ll want to get active in recycling and all sorts of stuff. So far it’s so popular that we’re constantly being asked by other kids if they can join it, but it’s already bigger than we wanted. We were hoping for something like 15 kids, but we’ve got 25 that have been coming. This coming Sunday we’re taking our first field trip, it’s only up to the top of this big hill by the city, but all the kids are excited. We’ve designed a nature scavenger hunt for them and I think they’re going to like it.

   Christine has also started giving talks to the mothers at the children’s hospital and I think they’re actually going to use the things she’s telling them. She only started last week with nutrition but they seem to be getting it, asking questions and everything.

   That’s far more than I can say for my talks at the boy’s school. They’re just completely out of control. They’ve never had any discipline in their classrooms and trying to get them to sit down and shut up is a Herculean feat that I have yet to master. I’ve actually decided to abandon the big class I’ve been teaching. The problem is they just don’t have any interest in learning, and I’m not sure how to spark that. Out of the 40 there are maybe 3 that really seem interested in what I have to say, but with the other 37 screaming and running around, it’s basically impossible to get anything done. This is a 7th grade class, but if you saw their behavior you’d think it was kindergarten. However, there’s a smaller 7th grade class that keeps asking me to come to their class instead and the few times I’ve been there the majority have seemed really interested in what I had to say, even going as far as to shush the other students. I’m going to try with that class and see how things go, my novelty may wear off and the same behavior start again, in which case I’m just going to leave them to their lord of the flies scenario.

   Our English classes that we decided to teach at our house started out poorly. In fact, in our first class we only had one 10 year old girl. However, we changed our scheme from having them pay monthly, to per class, and lowered the price as well so that in our 2nd class we had 8 people. At this point we just want to earn enough money to pay off the $80 we paid to buy the 16 chairs. I think after today we’ll have 3 of them paid off, but I feel confident we’ll have them paid off by the time we leave, plus we can probably sell the chair for about $48, so it’s not a big deal really.

   The library project has stalled somewhat, we’ve been waiting for the school to have another administrative meeting so that they can approve what we want to do with the library, rules and such, and also so they can write an application for the computer we’re going to give them. We want them to apply for it so they’ll feel like they had to do something for it and maybe just maybe they’ll take care of it. The problem is that they were supposed to have a meeting 2 weeks ago, then they told us they were going to have it last week, and last week they told us they were going to have it this week. You can see how this could be frustrating.

   Following in that same vain I went to teach my first Flash class at the high school 2 weeks ago and was informed that there was no school since the students had taken tests that morning, ok, so I’ll come back next week. I came back the next week and was greeted by, “class? Oh, yeah, when should I tell the students to come? Do we need the software?”. I’m just constantly amazed that they can ask me to do something for them and be so clueless. I mean, they ask me to teach them a program that they don’t even have, and then they don’t even bother to invite the students. Who knows if it’ll happen though. These people are the first people to tell you what hard workers El Salvadorians are, but I haven’t seen it, I’ve seen just the opposite. Just another case of telling you what you want to here while doing the opposite, or nothing at all in this case.

   If this stuff falls through, it doesn’t matter to me really. It’ll just give me more time to work on web design and earn money for the hike. I actually enjoy the web design work and sneak it in even though I should be doing other things. The main thing is that I’m here, living cheaply, and learning Spanish one way or the other. I’m not going to kill myself for these people when they’re not willing to put in at least the little effort to allow me to help them. Anyway, I’m still happy to be here and although there are ups and downs I take it all, because it’s all part of the experience.

Posted by Tao at 11:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBacks (0)

I woke up and knew that I'd just had a pretty interesting dream. I was finally able to grab that edge and peel it free in my mind. If I concentrated enough I could lift myself of the ground for a few seconds. Then I realized that my clothes were too heavy. So I stripped down naked and voosh, I was zipping through the sky. I flew all the way to somewhere in Mississippi and as soon as my foot touched the ground it was like I finally remembered gravity. Thud. There I was in front of some restaurant. I ran inside and found some clothes, don't know how. Then I mugged some guy and stole his motorcycle and was hurtling down the Natchez Trace when I woke up. I'm always moving in my dreams.

Posted by Tao at 09:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)