Approaching the end of study mission, there are quite a few people and things that have inspired me. The one that inspired me the most is Kiva.

 

Kiva is a non-profit organization which aims to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty. Using micro-finance concepts, people can lend money directly to the real individuals in need of funding.

 

Using micro-finance concepts is one of the unique points of Kiva. By using the power of knowledge, one can save more people and contribute more to the society.

 

The startup experience of the founder also inspired me a lot. Though receiving a lot of negative feedback like “That can’t scale”, “that is illegal”, “that is not charity”, the founder carried on his idea with great determination. After spending almost two years in preparation work, he finally quitted his job, and fully devoted to Kiva. Early stages for all companies are difficult and tough.

 

The founder is a very humble gentleman. He is very open-minded and glad to listen to various suggestions. Though we can actually see he is not so confident about the future of Kiva, he makes great efforts on it.

 

Non-profit organizations are usually even harder to start up than profit making companies. Nevertheless these organizations play a very important role in our society.

 

There is a non-profit organization in China that I admire very much, 1KG MORE (http://www.1kg.org/). This organization advocates an innovative concept of travel, that every traveler may help the local rural community, in such a joyful way “Travel Makes a Better World”. Once when I talked to the founder Andrew, he told me that social entrepreneurship in China faces more hardships than in other countries because of the current politics system and business system. For 1KG MORE, it experiences really a lot of difficulties in the startup process and it is still finding its way for a sustainable future development.

 

Helping the disadvantaged is also the vision of my life, and social entrepreneurship is what I will devote to after my graduation. Bertrand Russell’s words have always been my motto, which I extremely agree to: “Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. “

 

I want to put his full article here, to share with all the iLeaders:

 

What I lived for

 

Bertrand Russel

 

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy — ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness — that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it, finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what — at last — I have found.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.

Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a hated burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer. This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.

Throughout this trip, I definitely believe that entrepreneurs can change the world, and I am more determined to be an entrepreneur in the future.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 2nd, 2009 at 2:47 am and is filed under Kiva. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.