The Kiva Initiative

The Olatunji Foundation has signed up with Kiva in order to add a new dimension to our mission. The Olatunji Foundation was founded on the principle that those of us who are Pan-Africanists and who are relatively economically well off should put our money where our mouths are. We believe that by pooling our resources in such a way that makes a minimal impact on our individual finances, we can push forward a Pan-African agenda by training the next generation and now by directly providing economic assistance to Africa by way of it's people. Furthermore through the Olatunji Foundation team we can make it know WHO we are and WHAT we stand for rather than donate to organizations who are doing things but perhaps not in a way that reflects our particular values.

There are three ways you can push forward this initiative:

1) You can join Kiva yourself and join the Olatunji Foundation team and donate on it's behalf. You will need to use Paypal to transfer funds.

2) You can donate directly to the Olatunji Foundation at its website and we will disburse the funds via the Kiva page. You can see that we mean business because you can check the Kiva website to see exactly where we have put your money.

3) You can purchase a Garvey's Ghost T-shirt and support both the Olatunji Foundation itself and have a portion of sales go towards Kiva and our Scholarships.

What will we be doing with the pooled money? We are going to target our donations to Africans and to black people in the Diaspora. In other words the recipient will be a person of African descent. A goal that I would like to have by the end of the year is for the Olatunji Foundation team to be the premier donor to Africans. I would like to see us be able to fully fund requests.

Imagine for a minute that in a village or city in Africa a Kiva representative hands over a micro-loan to a small business owner and tells them it came from the Olatunji-Foundation Team. Imagine they go to the website and see a collection of black folk following in the steps of Garvey (remember that Garvey wanted black folk of the diaspora to use their technical skills and financial resources to develop Africa so this is directly in line with that age old goal).

One of the biggest potentials here is that these loans are to be repaid (if possible) When that happens we will be able to pool previous donations into a growing pool for future donations. Of course it is entirely possible that the business that we donate to will fail and be unable to repay the loan. Such is the risk we take with anything.

So please use one of the options to support our Kiva initiative.

Sondjata K. Olatunji