The International Bank of Bob: Connecting Our Worlds One $25 Kiva Loan at a Time
While on assignment in Dubai to cover the world’s most luxurious hotels, Harris got sidetracked by the stories of the indentured immigrant laborers conscripted to build these palaces of opulence. Determined to do something to help the families of the working poor worldwide, he signed up with Kiva, an organization that allows individuals to lend money via the Internet to people in developing countries by providing “microfinancing” loans to small family businesses, for everything from buying material and supplies to the purchase of cows and goats. Not content with merely helping from afar, Harris volunteered to tour the world and meet some of the Kiva recipients, and this is where the story really begins. Traveling to challenging and often war-torn places like Peru, Bosnia, Rwanda, Cambodia, and Beirut, Lebanon, he checks out the repair shops, furniture businesses, hair salons, yogurt makers, and livestock owners who have been made successful by the microloans, but, most important, he learns firsthand about their personal and political struggles and is deeply impacted by the lives of the new friends he makes along the way. --David Siegfried