Website of the Week Kiva.org

Kiva.org is praised in Bill Clinton’s latest book Giving. Basically, it’s person-to-person microlending.

In their own words:

Kiva lets you connect with and loan money to unique small businesses in the developing world. By choosing a business on Kiva.org, you can “sponsor a business” and help the world’s working poor make great strides towards economic independence. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates from the business you’ve sponsored. As loans are repaid, you get your loan money back.

Website of the Week: Free Rice

The World Food Program donates 20 grains of rice for each vocabulary question that you get correct while playing its game Free Rice. The ads at the bottom of the screen generate revenue to pay for the rice, you learn big words, and somebody somewhere gets a meal. Everybody wins!

Go play FREE RICE

Website of the Week: Project Seahorse

Thanks to Aquagrrrl for reminding me that sometimes you should research before you blog.

Now, go visit PROJECT SEAHORSE.

Website(s) of the week

Being a newbie to the world of literary agents, editors, and publisher, I’ve found the following blogs offered some insight:

Miss Snark – Written by an unanimous agent, Miss Snark, seems to call it like it is. Her snarkiness came to an end in May of this year, but this is still a great place to search for publishing questions and etiquette.

Pub Rants – The Glinda-the-Good-Witch to Miss Snark’s Wicked-Witch, agent Kristin based out of Denver offers tips and mini-workshops.

Editorial Ass – In a similar vein as Miss Snark, this editorial assistant takes readers behind the scenes of a publishing house.

Website of the Week: Patagonia’s footprint

Patagonia’s Footprint Chronicles

Patagonia is an outdoor clothing company that has stuck to its guns over the years. Their quality is at a premium and so is their price. The stuff just ain’t cheap. They understand that producing goods impacts our world and they try their best to lower that impact and to educate their customers how they can lower their own. They don’t shy away from telling people where their goods are sourced, in fact, they have a map showing the global journey a few of their products take before they end up in our closet.

Website of the Week: Geoff Toons

Everybody needs cartoons in their life. Geoff Hassing the cartoonist who drew my Where am I wearing? shirt has joined the blogosphere and I’m pretty excited about it. Geoff’s work is hilarious. He’s always exploring new characters and ideas and I expect he’ll feature quite a few of them on his new blog.

For a good Geoff sampler check out his Film @ Eleven series.

Websites of the week

The World Hands Project – building homes from pallets.

Builders Without Border - You know, like those doctors, but with hammers.

Website of the Week: Conor’s Mildly Thrilling Tales

CONOR’S MILDLY THRILLING TALES

Conor’s website was once named, “How Conor is spending his money.” At that time he was spending it traveling the world for a year and a half, which is by all means is a respectable way to lower one’s bank account.

But then Conor settled down and now he considers his tales to be only mildly thrilling, if you consider settling in Kathmandu, Nepal, founding a home for trafficked children, and searching for the children’s parents in remote mountain villages mildly thrilling.

Not only is Conor’s blog interesting, it is written well. His writing style is funny and conversational. It’s not easy to write about serious subjects and maintain a great sense of humor. But Conor does.

His blog postings have slowed as of late, but he seems to have a lot on his plate: leaving Nepal, getting married, and maintaining his NGO, Next Generation Nepal, from Florida. I expect and hope Conor will continue writing. I for one would like to read a book about the last few year of his life.

If you are still reading this post and haven’t clicked over to read Conor’s Mildly Thrilling Tales you are doing yourself a disservice. I write about my underwear; he writes about orphans.

If you don’t comeback, I won’t blame you.

GO!

A proclamation

In an effort to reclaim my weekends, from now on Saturdays will be “Website of the Week” day. I’ll simply post a link and a short blurb about a site that has caught my eye. Feel free to email me suggestions about sites to feature.

This week’s website:

Go and tell this guy where to go.

Readership is always down on the weekends, anyhow. I might as well save my precious words for peak time. It seems that most of you tune in to WAIW? when you’re at work getting paid. Shame on you. I’ll still probably do some regular posting on Saturdays, when so inspired.

With this proclamation we now have two scheduled days here at WAIW?:

Saturdays – Website of the Week

Sundays – A Thousand Words