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[David Wong]

Total Loaned as of 10.26.09: $18,525

Our Kiva.org Lender Page.

Paypal Address to donate: dwong187@gmail.com

List of people requesting money.

As you may know, the posters here occasionally band together on an informal basis and donate money to some worthy cause, be it sick kids or replacing a dude's stolen camera. It's time to do it again.

Somebody found Kiva.org, a program that lets you directly loan money to people from poor countries trying to start businesses. Give a man a hot dog and he eats for a day, give him an industrial hotdog shooter and he'll eat for a lifetime. It's a brilliant idea, because a $100 donation (worth exponentially more in their currency) can wind up providing multiple jobs and a steady source of income for who knows how many people down the line. The economic benefit ripples out in ways straight charity never could.

So I have been appointed to collect the money, because I'm the one guy who you know will never leave the forums. You all know where to find me.

If you want to donate to the program, you can give via Paypal at my address:

dwong187@gmail.com

If you've never used PayPal before, it's as simple as going to Paypal.com and clicking the "send money" link at the top. It takes seconds, and anyone with a credit card or bank account can do it.

If you want more details on how Kiva works, click here.

We have set up a lender's page here:

http://www.kiva.org/lender/bernieskids

There you will be able to track all of our loans and such. We have decided to name ourselves "Bernie's Kids," after 70 year-old stripper and long-time forum hero Bernie Barker:



Now, these are "loans" in that the borrowers will attempt to repay them. If they do, we have the option of simply rolling the money into another loan or donating it to Kiva to help pay their operating expenses. We will never accept repayment from Kiva however, so you will not get your money back; what you send in is a donation.

This is purely an informal arrangement between friends on a forum; this is not sponsored by Cracked or Demand Media at all. We're just using my paypal because I'm the one that everybody knows, if you don't trust me with your money then of course you'll want to donate through your own channels.

We can change the lender name any time we want. We'll use this thread for tracking donations and finding worthy recipients.

Again:

Our Kiva.org Lender Page.

Paypal Address to donate: dwong187@gmail.com

List of people requesting money.

[Quagmar]

Thank you for organizing this.

My contribution is on the way.

[Johnny Roastbeef]

My donation has been sent.  I like to think of the user name dwong187 as the email for a murder for hire business, to whom I've just sent money.

[David Wong]

I had a little over $200 in the paypal account from people buying signed JDATE books, so I'll donate that.

[Cowtppr]

Ka-Donated!

[wahsatchmo]

Donated from my business account.  At least I can feel good that my ruthless exploitation of third world child labor will now pay dividends to the world.

[Flamer Shaftglutton]

Alright, I'm in. It's no $100, but it will certainly help. Is there any way you can put a total of the donations up somewhere? Obviously not real-time, but just a tally at the end of every day or week.

[subtle_rift]

I just jizzed into the phallus fund.

For our profile on Kiva, can we make a spoof Nigerian spam mail?  Sort of like the worlds most retarder scammer or spambot gone wrong?  "...before my father died he asked that I find a trustworthy person in Christ to make use of the funds..." kind of thing.  Funnier people than I would have to write it of course, but if it was done in the same style as John Cheese's recent round with a scammer it could make people do a double take.

[shrek]

i just sent you $50, i'm quite excited about this.

[David Wong]

So there's $500 in there now, plus several transactions that haven't cleared yet.

[coolman]

Can we go ahead and start suggesting people to donate to?  (I will donate or set up my own account next Monday when I get paid)

[wanderarbeiter]

I'm in with $25.

[Darien]

Ditto.
Who are people's faves for a recipient---? I don't think I have a preference.

[Holly]

It would be cool to pick someone who's doing something health, education or housing related. Those sorts of things will not only benefit the recipients but their communities as well. Just a thought.

[coolman]

We sort of established in the previous thread that the loans would be made around something the community could support.  We wanted to back a cybercafe but that got funded rather quickly (which really isn't a surprise since half the profiles on Kiva say they work in computer related fields).

[Technohawk]

Donated $50 to the cause.

I nominate this guy.

He needs the money for drugs(pharmaceuticals like malaria medicine and pain killers). As of this moment he needs $450 more.

[coolman]

After making sure the Sinapi Aba Trust is legit (I know kiva says they are legit but it doesn't hurt to spend two minutes looking on Google), I support the idea of loaning Technohawk's man a couple Benjamins.

[David Wong]

I guess if we get... three votes on a recipient we'll do it?  Like somebody suggests one and then if it gets seconded and thirded we'll do it?

I can't think of how else to decide.

[coolman]

I'm not sure how else to do it.  If you implement the "three person rule", I think you should also  implement a maximum amount that can be loaned (like 100 bucks). Either way, I really shouldn't have a say until I donate.

[Tim]

I threw in £51.88. I don't mind where it goes, but Technohawk's man seems like a pretty decent start.