Note up front: This is not about the regular tapping resources that I send out every week, but instead a story of what I do with some of the money from the sales of products and services at TappingQandA.com as well some of the money from supporters of the podcast.

If this doesn't interest you, no worries! Just delete this email, knowing that another free tapping resource will land in your inbox on Thursday.

Good morning,

It was a little more than 10 years ago when I heard about microloans for the first time.

I'm guessing it was in a story on NPR or a podcast I listened to at the time.

The story was simple. It was about how small business owners all over the world were having a hard time getting business loans. Most of them were looking for loans of $50 or $100 to buy supplies for whatever small business they ran.

The amounts were much too small for a regular bank to consider, so the business owners were forced to turn to local loan sharks. These unregulated loan sharks were charging between 100% and 200% interest on a loan that was only for a few months.

Those interest rates made it impossible for small business owners to improve their lives, not to mention the danger to themselves and their families they risked by engaging with these sharks.

Micro loans were born out of this situation.

Micro loans are exactly what they sound like, very small loans. They provide small business owners with capital they need to grow their businesses and, more importantly, take care of their families, without having to resort to using loan sharks.

I use a nonprofit organization called Kiva which provides micro loans all over the world. Kiva works with local partners to find the business owners in need of the loans, trains business owners to help them to be more successful in their businesses, and manages the loan repayments. Most of the loans that I make are to women and POC.

These are not donations, but loans, which means that once the loan is paid back to Kiva, I am paid back as the lender and I can loan the money back to another business owner in need.

Because I keep lending the money back out, every dollar I have deposited in my account has now been lent out 6 times.

That is really amazing!

I would like to thank all of the supporters of the Tapping Q and A podcast. Every month 10% of the support to the podcast is deposited into my Kiva account, is lent out, and once repaid, it is loaned out again.

If you would like to support the podcast, receive some amazing thank you gifts, and be part of this support via Kiva, you can see the details here: http://tappingqanda.com/support

I would like to invite you to consider supporting the great work Kiva is doing. I have created a team inside of Kiva giving you an opportunity to follow the groups we are supporting through these loans. Note that I just discovered the team functionality so it only has a few loans in it at the moment, even though as a community we have supported many more.

If you would like to join or follow the Tapping Q and A Kiva team you can do so here: https://www.kiva.org/invitedto/tqa/by/gene5846

And as a personal thank you, if you join the team I will send you 3 free tap-along audios. (Just send me an email after you have joined.)

If you don't want to join the team, but would like to support the great work of Kiva you can do so here: https://www.kiva.org

Feel free to reply to this email if you have any questions about Kiva or microloans and I will share whatever I can.

Thanks for your consideration,

Gene