What’s going on here: big fun with tiny loans
This blog is increasingly about The 1st International Bank of Bob, my upcoming book about microfinance for Bloomsbury.
After my round-the-world Forbes Traveler gig in '08, I plowed the cash into more than 2200 microloans in 55 countries, most via Kiva. Now I'm traveling the developing world to see the results, meet cool people, and share wild stories.
So far the book covers Bosnia, Rwanda, Morocco, Kenya, Peru, Poland, and Tanzania — and I'm only halfway through.
We'll have a speaking tour soon. A sample is to the right and there's more here. If you want me to come by, call. Thanks!
Best. Birthday. Ever.
Oct 24th
Thanks to the 75+ people who came out to the W hotel in Westwood last week for the combination of Kiva's 6th anniversary, a celebration of the million bucks (!) the Friends of Bob Harris team at Kiva.org has raised to lend to small businesses in the developing world, and my own birthday party.
The million bucks was actually the team's goal for my birthday present (Kiva did a whole blog post about it, in fact), which is also mindblowing—the idea that my birthday would ever be an occasion for hundreds of people to do something nice for thousands of total strangers all over the world… I just don't even know how to respond. (In fact, these 750 sweet folks have made it to over $1.1 million by my birthday, and are already approaching $1.2 million.)
One highlight I'll never forget: I turned around, and more than a dozen folks had put on matching T-shirts proclaiming themselves officially as Friends of Bob Harris.
It's one thing to know you have a lot of wonderful friends. It's another to see that they've decide they want a uniform. Wow.
Everyone should get to see something like this once in their lives.
Huge, huge thanks. Now it's on to two million!
One MILLION dollars!
Sep 5th
Looky what the Kiva team did today!
Congratulations to 620 sweet and generous people!
Now… [cue Dr. Evil voice]… on to Norway!
Intercontinental Ballistic Microfinance
Sep 3rd
Check out this trippy data visualization Kiva did of more than 5 years and $200 million in microlending:
Intercontinental Ballistic Microfinance from Kiva Microfunds on Vimeo.
The Kiva team keeps breaking records — join today, and you can do a $25 loan for free!
Aug 1st
Friends of Bob Harris, the Kiva team that sprouted up around my upcoming book, is frankly blowing my mind.
Across Kiva, more than 600,000 lenders have organized themselves into nearly 20,000 teams.
At right are the fundraising results from July.
I wish I had words for how honored I am to be a small part of this group. (That's not false modesty; I didn't create the group, and I don't do much, other than just cheer all these kind people on.)
If you're not familiar with microfinance, it's a Nobel Peace Prize-winning solution to poverty that makes financial resources and education available to hundreds of millions of people.
Kiva, meanwhile, is an amazing platform that allows you to lend $25 or more to schools, clinics, farmers, craftspeople, and other mom-and-pop shops in more than 50 countries.
Does it work? I've spent much of the last two years visiting clients in diverse locales like Peru, Morocco, Bosnia, Lebanon, Rwanda, Nepal, and Cambodia. I've seen the results with my own eyes. Yes. It works. In some places, it works like gangbusters.
And if you'd like to jump in, today is a great time: Kiva is offering 4000 of these $25 loans for free to new members. They're going fast — about 20 have gone in the time it took me to write this far.
Kiva puts up the cash — you just open an account, choose a recipient whose loan you'd like to see financed, and boom — off the money goes. You can then watch as your chosen client grows their business and repays the loan. You'll get hooked, doing good this easily. Pretty soon you'll want to put a little of your own cash to work, too. (My repayment rate has been over 99 percent, so yes, you get paid back.)
The 4000 free loans to new members are zipping away — 19 more have gone since the middle of this post. Wait — 20. No, 21. Okay, I'll hit "publish." Hurry!
My Jeopardy! memoir on Millionaire: When Worlds Collide
Jul 22nd
Photo taken from a TV screen and emailed to me, much to my pleasant surprise:
Matter meets anti-matter! It's a miracle we all survived.
But this makes it a twofer, since the mothership did this in 2009:
If the story collapses on itself much further, a black hole might form. Best I move on now.
TCoNAheads
Jul 18th
The Trivia Championships of North America were held recently at the MGM Grand in Vegas, and a big thanks to Paul Bailey for organizing it and about 100 other people for being such fun to hang out with.
On Saturday, I had the honor of hosting a roundtable discussion about IBM's human-crushing Watson trivia machine, with guests Ken Jennings (74-time Jeopardy! winner and Watson victim) and Ed Toutant (Millionaire winner and former IBM engineer). This is the three of us afterward, looking like frat brothers about to go on a bender.
Yes, we are all that orange.
On Sunday, I had the fun of playing the Alex Trebek role for the final rounds of the team championship. No crazy-lady-thief-chasing required.
I apparently left my chin in the green room. But no matter: congrats to Jonathan Hess, champion in multiple individual competitions, and to team champions Frank In Court.
Paul Bailey deserves huge praise in creating a counterpart to the European Quizzing Championships, and the event was a roaring success. See you next year in Vegas, and (hopefully) this fall in Bruges!
Zen in the Tokyo subway
Jul 17th
Words I will try to live by. Spotted in Jimbocho station last February.
I am Eliza Dushku’s brother (at least in cartoon form)
Jul 15th
If you're not watching Torchwood: Miracle Day, you're missing out. It's everything you'd expect from the Russell T. Davies, the genius behind the best years of Doctor Who.
I've been a fan of Russell's for years, and lucky enough to call him a friend from the day Tom Tomorrow noticed that Russell's book about Doctor Who contained a completely unexpected bit of praise for my Prisoner of Trebekistan, of all things. I contacted Russell to say thanks, he emailed back in about ten seconds, because he's that cool and gracious, and it's been hooray ever since.
The animated webseries that goes with Miracle Day, Torchwood: Web of Lies is also pretty damn good. And I'm happy to say I have a tiny, tiny part in it — playing Eliza Dushku's brother. Although in cartoon form, I look like this:
I gotta lay off the caffeine.
$700,000 and still accelerating!
Jun 25th
Congrats to Friends of Bob Harris, the Kiva lending team I nominally captain (although all I really do is cheerlead) on passing the $700,000 mark!
FoBH has also just entered Kiva's all-time top ten teams in sheer number of loans made, passing Kiva France, with a current total of over 25,000 loans to clinics, schools, and small businesses in more than 55 countries.
I look at those numbers and frankly can't quite even imagine this much generosity brewing up so quickly from so many people. I don't even know what to say about it. Awesome, wonderful, fantastic, and so on!
Onward! Team Norway, we're coming for you!
Nepalling work conditions
Jun 14th
A frequent sight on the outskirts of Kathmandu:
Such a stunningly beautiful country.
Such sweet, welcoming people.
So much poverty. So much backbreaking work.
I hope Urmila and the other great folks at BPW Patan, the microfinance bank I was here to visit, manage to do as much good as they intend to.
Their work is as much uphill as everyone else's here.
PS my new friends Claudine and Brian have recently transitioned from white-collar America to living, working, and blogging in Nepal. Their blog, The Kathmanduo, is fabulous.
Around the world in 90 days… with no baggage
Mar 5th
And here I pride myself on traveling light because I'm on my third round-the-world trip with only carry-ons… turns out that's kid stuff.
Jen and Marcus have me beaten by a mile — circling the globe for three solid months with only the clothes on their backs.
It helps that they're wearing ScotteVest clothes that are designed to hold a ton. And yes, the trip a bit of a publicity stunt for ScotteVest, but I'm all for it. It's terrific gear. I'm not being paid to say this: I've had a ScotteVest jacket for years now, and I love it. You can put more stuff in the pockets (many of which are specifically designed for iPods and similar doohickeys) more comfortably than you'd ever imagine. I wear my jacket everywhere I go for about five months a year, and some nights when I get home and unpack the pockets, I'm reminded of clowns climbing out of a Volkswagen.
Plus, Jen and Marcus are doing their "No Baggage Challenge" for my favorite charity — Kiva, which is at the center of my next book. They have a Kiva team, too — and if you've joined my team already, no reason not to join theirs, too, and toss a few loans on their stack as well. It's all about doing good for folks in the developing world anyhow. Meanwhile, you can follow this sweet young couple on their round-the-world adventure here.
I might just have to do one of these No Baggage Challenges myself one of these days…
How the Angkor Wat looks in memory
Mar 5th
I have much more accurate depictions of the Angkor Wat in Cambodia, but it's such an otherworldly place, this reflection feels more true to my experience:
Ken Jennings, awesomeness of
Mar 5th
Dude is smarter, richer, thinner, and younger than me. Also, at least as funny, and at least as good a writer, and probably more likeable. If we were in a herd of hunter-gatherers, I'd be the one carrying the heavy stuff Ken hunted and gathered.
And then he goes and plugs my Jeopardy! book on Reddit the other day. Okay, now he's nicer than me, too.
Probably just to rub it in. Yeah. That must be his evil plan.
He's also got a really cool new book coming out this fall, too. One that I can't wait to read and urge you to pre-order. Because it's probably as excellent as his blog always is. Which, btw, he updates more often than I do this one by a factor of ten.
Curse you, Jennings! You've won… well, all of these rounds, and some others I've probably forgotten… but I'll get you yet!
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you… the Fish Pedicure
Feb 23rd
Had a long layover in the Singapore airport on my way to Cambodia to do some interviews for the book. What to do? Why, visit the Fish Spa, of course, where you can allow hundreds of ravenous doctor fish to feast on your dead skin cells while you watch and try not to freak out.
I've only had one human-hands pedicure to compare this to, but this was every bit as efficient. And way, way ookier.
I’ll have a cat and a beer, please
Feb 21st
I have a few days in Tokyo on my way to Cambodia for my book on microfinance, so I went for a wander in throbbing Shinjuku, certain something fun would leap out pretty quick. Sure enough, 5 minutes after I got off the train: this curious sidewalk ad showing a cat and a menu leads up to a two-floor complex called the Calico Cat Cafe.
For a minimum cover of about $7 (rising by the hour), kitteh-deprived apartment dwellers can wash up, change into slippers, flump down with a few of the house's 50 fuzzy felines, and bliss out. I'm allergic and have a bad cold, so I didn't indulge, but the cats seem well tended, and customers must follow strict rules about not disturbing cats who aren't feeling all Cute Overload right that minute. Everybody of all species looked downright giddy.
Bali connection
Feb 8th
My friends Sara and John just came back from taking their kids on a long holiday in Bali. I've been to Bali twice, and everything you hear about the sweet and gentle nature of the Balinese seems to be pretty much true. Sara and John and their kids are every bit as wonderful, so it's only natural that they formed a bond with the local workers normally taken for granted by Western visitors. Sara writes up the experience here, and I highly recommend the read.
Warning: by the end, you'll be wanting to get on a plane and bring a truckload of money and school supplies with you.
Congrats to the 336 most generous people I know
Feb 1st
Friends of Bob Harris, the Kiva team growing out of my book project, went over the $250,000 mark this weekend!
To everyone involved, thanks! Your generosity is beyond belief.
Even more unbelievable, 13 hours into February, the team is ranked #1 Kiva-wide for the month (out of almost 17,000 teams), with more than $10,000 raised just so far today.
I really have almost nothing to do with this, other than being a bit of a cheerleader for some amazingly cool folks.
It's an honor. Truly.
Get a Big Box of Electricity Here
Jan 20th
Another pic from the Africa trip — this sign was all over Kigali, and it always made me smile:
The way they're electrifying the country now is, well, electrifying. But the way the sign is phrased, I couldn't help but imagine they had these big tubs of the stuff sitting around on shelves.
You come in, maybe carrying a cardboard box or a plastic bag, and they pour you a bunch, with lots of little sparks dripping down the sides, and you go on your way.
