July 1st 2009 - Loan-A-Thon Results

Thanks to everyone who participated in the July 1st Loan-A-Thon. I think it was a successful day of lending :)

Now that we have a few team members keeping statistics we can reflect on our past lending history.

JimNZ made note of our totals for the 24 hour period Pacific Time on July 1st.

Aaaannnddddd we're done for the July 1 Loan-a-thon! July 1 has just finished in Pacific standard time, which is the Kiva.org home location.

Our finishing position from this 24 hours :

Number of Team Members 4666
Number of Loans 21814
Number of Loans per Member 4.68
Total Amount Loaned $656,900.00
*Updated as of Jul 02, 2009 12:31 am

The starting position :

Number of Team Members 4646
Number of Loans 21544
Number of Loans per Member 4.64
Total Amount Loaned $649,750.00
*Updated as of Jun 30, 2009 12:31 pm

So that's :

20 new members
270 new loans (at $25 each, that's $6750)
$7,150 loaned (therefore some loaned more than $25 to a recipent?)

Daniel R's stats page http://www.neophi.com/apps/Kiva/ doesn't seem to be in the same timezone as Kiva.org, but does show a satisfying jump in total value.

I noticed by looking at the graph below that it looks like we lent more on the April 1st Loan-A-Thon than the July 1st Loan-A-Thon, however a significant amount was lent on July 2nd so maybe some people got their loans in on the second; we're not all in the same time zone so I like to think the Loan-A-Thons are really the first of the month with a 12 hour grace period before and after the special day :-)



Another thing I noticed is that on Loan-A-Thon days we loan approximately 75% as much as we do on the 15th of the month when we get our recycled money. So we should all pat ourselves on that back for our Loan-A-Thon results since most of the Loan-A-Thon funds come in from "new money".

By Peter

July 1st 2009 - Loan-A-Thon

Loan-A-Thons are always an exciting time for the team. With all the interesting discussions going on lately on the message board, I'm sure this Loan-A-Thon will be lots of fun!

Congratulations to everyone on passing the 600K mark in loans; we are well on our way to passing our year-end goal of loaning $1 million.

We've got a couple new polls on the blog, check them out and cast your vote.

Joe from our team has given a good explanation of the July 1st Loan-A-Thon:

In honor of those throughout history who have thrown off the yoke of oppressive governments in July, we will lend capital to our fellow Humans who need it so that they can throw off the oppressive yoke of poverty!

In addition to that we are also celebrating Muhammad Yunus' Birthday, which is June 28th [close enough :-) ]


By Peter

We've passed $500,000... GO TEAM

On May 16th we passed $500,000 in loans. As of today we are over $540,000 in total loans!!

We now have 4000 members, welcome to all the new members and thanks to all the loyal members who make this the best lending team on Kiva!

Our loans per member is currently at 4.4 which is great, we are a large group and very actively lending :)

Here's a screenshot taken by one of our members at the 500K milestone:



On another note, we are now taking polls of the membership. Thanks to Lynn, Lo, Judy and Brian. Our first poll is at the top right of the site.

Team Discussions

There are two great places to participate in discussion with our fellow team members:


FriendFeed - Created by Edz


FaceBook - Created by Jim


Also, for some team statistics check out this cool app:

April 1 2009 - Loan-A-Thon Results

Good work everyone, we made 313 loans amounting to $8,700 in loans. Probably more if you consider all the people who made loans before and after the 24 hour pacific time period!

Thanks to Jonathon we have a couple of screen shots to mark the occasion:
Before A

Before B

After A

After B




For those looking forward to the next Loan-A-Thon it's July 1st!

I think Joe explained our Loan-A-Thon schedule best when he said:

January 1st - Make your Happy New Year by loaning capital to your fellow Humans who need it so that they can have their own Happy New Year!

April 1st - We're no April Fools! We will not waste our money tithing to a religious organization when we can do some actual good by lending capital directly to our fellow Humans who need it!

July 1st - In honor of those throughout history who have thrown off the yoke of oppressive governments in July, we will lend capital to our fellow Humans who need it so that they can throw off the oppressive yoke of poverty!

November 1st - The day after celebrating Halloween do something else to scare religious organizations! Lend capital to our fellow Humans who need it so that they can materially improve their lives and no longer need the false comfort provided by an irrational belief system!

By Peter

Self-Deception: To Believe What We Are Not

It is true that people live in a world of self-deception. They remain aware that it is possible to be deceived by another person-- a family member, a coworker, or a friend-- so they try to ensure that they are not taken advantage of or fooled. They know that if they are deceived that they will have to reap the costs of their error in judgment. It is sort of like a part of the human radar in order to avoid people that are dishonest and greedy--- a social behavior that was used long ago by our ancestors to do the same for the protection of their families, tribes, territory, and resources.

Deception is prevalent in society among relatives and non-relatives. It takes effort and energy to maintain a straight face and charm in order to deceive others. Whether the deception has to do with telling a lie to get away with something or take advantage of someone the individual has to almost believe their own deception to outwardly give an impression of honesty and genuineness. Not only do they deceive others but they subconsciously deceive themselves. It becomes increasingly difficult for the person to distinguish between what is real and what is superficial and where to draw the line.

It is not easy to understand self-deception from the point of view of a human being. We constantly judge ourselves while judging others and adopt or develop stereotypes in order to understand other people. We feel that we are more or less right about our judgments about ourselves and others but we are simply not. We tend to hold biases about different things (i.e. politics, race, gender, age, beauty, wealth, happiness, etc.) that make up part of our moral sense. These biases do not necessarily make up who a person is but instead reflects what society as a whole believes. These beliefs are emphasized in the media in order to get the attention of individuals and mold their opinions--- it is a form of deception. We pick and choose what to believe based on societal 'norms' and in turn deceive ourselves by accepting different biases without really understanding the ideas.

There is truly a cycle of deception which exists in society and it causes human beings to continuously deceive ourselves. Although it is important to detect when someone is being deceptive it is also important to understand that deception exists in all parts of society whether it is in government, business, media, social interactions, religion, education, it is everywhere.

We cannot simply believe something without knowing the basis of the idea or belief. There needs to be a means to understand society. One credible method is to look to science and evolutionary psychology for an understanding of human nature and why our thoughts operate in such a way. We are no more than a biological species with feelings and thoughts but we cannot believe that the basis of our moral sense comes from something beyond our biological limits. In that case, we are simply deceiving and confusing ourselves and driving us further from reality-- from what is true in the realm of our nature. We are only hurting ourselves when we believe what we are not.

By Rajvee

Loan-A-Thon: April 1st 2009

Our next Loan-A-Thon is April 1st, can't wait because they are always so fun. Let's work to stretch our lead and help reduce poverty in the world.

We recently got a nice mention from one of our team members on the blog Daylight Atheism and a link from Reddit

Kiva released an API recently that allows for some cool Kiva related Web Apps to be created. Here's one that crossed my desktop: Kiva World

In a sad turn of events for Canada, the Minister for Science is ignorant of the factual nature of Evolution (Google globeandmail.com).

By Peter