There are so many ways you can be a hero today and the world needs heroes. My favorite group is a non-profit organization called Kiva https://www.kiva.org/ which makes micro loans (preferably of at least $25) to people and groups worldwide, supporting small business in some of the most economically challenged areas of the world where few small businesses survive let alone thrive. These small loans move mountains in terms of the opportunities they afford the borrowers. Kiva loans change lives immeasurably. Your loan may help one person, a family, a group of neighbors or even a village. These borrowers earnestly want to make their businesses a success and this seed money gives them that boost. A loan can be for just about anything; buying food for farm animals, goods to sell, building
materials, a boat or new nets for fishing, anything that is needed to propel and grow a business might be a reason to make a loan. It's a great concept; you donate whatever you want through the secure website, you can pick the gender, nationality, type of business you want to make a loan towards, whether you want it to be to an individual or group. Then they pay you back in your account in small pieces. Once the loan is repaid you can re-loan that money or increase it, and make more than one loan or you could withdraw it. Kiva funds more than 4,000 borrowers a week! It's brilliant.
Once you make your first deposit to loan you never miss that money and as long as you keep reinvesting the money you are paid back, it keeps doing huge good for people you would never meet or be able to help otherwise. If you have multiple loans out when payments do come back in you can use the repayments from several loans to fund the next one. There is a degree of risk of course, but in the years I have participated I have never lost money and my participation is not so I can make money but to help someone else to flourish. Giving back to our community is an integral part of BrightStar Care of Milford Worcester's mission and this is just one more small way in which you can make a huge impact through an essentially tiny gesture.
