Case in point: Microfinance over the internet

People in the west are selfish and materialistic because they are unaware of their own power. If you could save a bus from driving off a cliff and save 25 children you would do so - and rightly feel like a hero. If you knew that you could stop a disease from killing 25 children and saw clearly how this could be done with no big sacrifice on your part - then we believe you would do that as well. The problem is that you don't see this as a choice you are making, you don't know how you could achieve this in practice, and if you donated money to a charity then the heroic result would not feel real to you.

That's what we want to change with the LifeYears initiative, because we believe the web has the potential to make the available choices clear, present, simple and compelling.

An excellent example of this is the microfinance website Kiva. Through this site anyone with a credit card can lend money (starting from $25) through microfinance institutions directly to individuals in the developing world, see how their lending is spent on concrete, specific investments to help small businesses involving shoe sales, agriculture, food production/sales etc., and see pictures, read updates and track your portfolio as time goes by. In addition, aggregate statistics is shown on how many people have signed up the last week, how many projects have been funded the last week and at what total amounts etc.

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