We just made four new loans at Kiva.org and I had to come share this news with you.

Thanks to your continued support of The Favor Stylist (thank you!), we have made a total of 146 loans, in 42 countries, with $2,232 in deposits. But the beauty of Kiva is that the money we lend gets repaid and we can lend it again and again. So this 146th loan we made tonight pushed us over a total of $5,000 lent so far!

kiva loans celebrating $5000

$5,000! I’m really excited about this and so grateful to you for helping to make this possible. Thank you thank you thank you!

Four new loans

Let me tell you a bit about these four loans we made tonight. The four recipients are Deisy, Maria, Marta, and Raquel, and they are all from Paraguay. I’ll be dropping off my daughter at college in a few short weeks, so I decided that this month we should make some loans for education! These young women are using their loans to pay for tuition and to buy supplies for university. Deisy is getting a technical degree in sewing. Maria is a teacher getting a master’s degree in education science, with a goal to be the director at her workplace. Marta is studying culinary arts to be a famous chef, and someday wants to have her own sweet shop. And Raquel is continuing her studies with a third loan through Kiva, which allows her to pay school fees.

All of these loans are through field partner Fundación Paraguaya, a “financially self-sustaining social enterprise that promotes entrepreneurship in urban and rural areas through microfinance, education programs, and more.” You can read more about Fundación Paraguaya and how they serve micro-entrepreneurs who are too small for the services offered by other microlenders.

Join us!

Have you joined our Celebrating What Matters team? We loan to women entrepreneurs and students, providing support for education and business building. We donate 10% of our profits to Kiva through our team, and we’d love to have more team members!

Wondering how this works? Once you sign up with Kiva (you can even use your Facebook account, if you’d like), you can join as many teams as you like. They’re organized by all sorts of categories and interests. When you go to make Kiva loans, you can choose one of your teams at checkout and that loan will count toward the team’s totals. (Don’t worry, the loans will still stay in your personal portfolio, too.)

If you’d like to join us, just click here.

What do you think? How should we celebrate this milestone ($5,000 seems like a lot to me!)?