FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: your name here
Tel: your telephone # here
Email: your email here
Atheists Lead The Movement To End Poverty
In just over one year the community of Atheists, Agnostics, Skeptics, Freethinkers, Secular Humanists and the Non-Religious (AASFSHNR) at Kiva.org have raised $1 million (USD) in interest-free loans to help end poverty. Kiva.org is a US non-profit organization that connects lenders with borrowers, from around the globe, who need a micro-finance loan. Peter Kroll, the AASFSHNR community team leader, created the community on August 28th, 2008 with the ambition to organize those who share his world view that "people should care about reducing the suffering of other human beings because we acknowledge the evolutionary fact that we are all one human family."
Kiva's co-founder Matt Flannery has put out his call that "now is a time for the world's privileged to demonstrate to the world's poor just how compassionate and resilient we are." The AASFSHNR community has responded, as well as many other communities and individuals. More than four years after Kiva's founding almost $100 million has been lent worldwide.
Micro-finance is the brain-child of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Mohammad Yunus. Yunus realized decades ago, on a visit to a poor village in his country of Bangladesh, that the local people were caught in an endless cycle of debt caused by loan-sharks. He realized what a difference it would make by "removing the barriers faced by the poor so that they can unleash their creativity and intelligence in the service of humanity."
I would like to recruit volunteers from each major city to email or fax the press release above with your personal contact information to your local newspaper or tv outlet. I've received advice that it's good to have a local representative as most news stories are told with a local angle.
Remember, if the media contacts you, you are representing our team so stay positive and be friendly. Talk about the need to make positive change in the world, our teams friendly competitions, our constant goal setting and breaking, our fun loan-a-thons and the sense of community feeling you get from being a part of the team.
Spread the word.... feel free to send letters to the editors, email blogs and tell friends. Anyway to let the world know.
Cheers,
Pete
Team Captain
5 comments:
I've forwarded this to The Freedom From Region Foundation (ffrf.org), encouraging them to add this to their next newsletter publication.
Perhaps we need to challenge the Christian community to over-take us if they can.
1. It might encourage additional participation.
2. It might be fun to giggle at them a little more.
Interest free loans? Kiva micro lenders charge quite a lot of interest.
What I find interesting is that if the top 20 churches in the U.S. and Canada pooled together the money they take in annually, they could feed one out of every six people on the planet. So why then do we still have hunger in the world?
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