By USA TODAY
Added: Sun, 02 Aug 2009 23:00:00 UTC

Thanks to Crapsquire for the link.
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/religion/post/2009/07/68495858/1

To really help "the last and the least" do you have to focus on "the lost" as well?

Maybe not -- if you go by the statistics at Kiva, the international internet person-to-person micro-lending site where it appears that folks with no religion are spirited participants in efforts to uplift the world's poorest.

Kiva, which kicked off in 2005, is a global force in orchestrating small loans to individual whose business successes ripple through the lives of their families and communities. Forbes once described it as mixing the "entrepreneurial daring of Google with the do-gooder ethos of Bono...”

According to the Associated Press, Kiva has raised more than $75 million for nearly 200,000 individuals in 44 countries and, this June, expanded the ranks of eligible entrepreneurs to struggling small businesses in the United States.

Last year Kiva added a gimmick for encouraging folks to lend (and re-lend once their original $150 or so has been repaid) through competition. There are teams by organized dozens of ways including special interest groups, churches, businesses and more.
And who's whomping the crowd overall?

In first place, with $761,975 loaned -- Atheists, Agnostics, Skeptics, Freethinkers, Secular Humanists and the Non-Religious "committed to caring about suffering." Next in the listings: Kiva Christians ($519,725), followed by Team Obama ($408,500).
...
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http://content.usatoday.com/communities/religion/post/2009/07/68495858/1

TAGGED: CAMPAIGNS, HUMANITARIAN EFFORTS