You may have already noticed the banner on the right-hand side of this website for Kiva. This is not at all a paid-for ad, it’s something I’ve put on my site because I think it’s a great cause and want to support it in anyway I can.

Kiva is a not-for-profit which enables people to make microloans – starting from as little as $25 – to others around the world who need a little bit of funding to start making their own lives better. This isn’t donating (although you can donate to support the running of Kiva itself), this is lending. The entrepreneurs you support with your capital pay back the loans, which you can then cash out or relend.It’s money that keeps cycling around, helping out not one person but many, again and again. There’s more on the Kiva website about micro-financing if you’re interested.

I’d been hearing about micro-financing for a long time, but it wasn’t until Peter Bihr at The Waving Cat mentioned his loans last year that I realised how easy it was to take part. If you’d like to see the loans I’m currently funding, here’s my lender page and I’ve set up a team which everyone is free to join. I plan to (very!) soon have embroidery patterns for sale on this site and 10% of each sale will be funneled straight into micro-loans.

As I said, it’s something I feel strongly about supporting.

Please go and check out the site, read through it and think it over. It’s a great way to help people out in a sustainable fashion.