matter very much.

The stories we tell ourselves about our own lives matter.

And most of all,

I think the way that we participate in each other's stories

is of deep importance.

I was six years old

when I first heard stories about the poor.

Now I didn't hear those stories from the poor themselves,

I heard them from my Sunday school teacher

and Jesus, kind of via my Sunday school teacher.

I remember learning that people who were poor

needed something material --

food, clothing, shelter -- that they didn't have.

And I also was taught, coupled with that,

that it was my job -- this classroom full of five and six year-old children --

it was our job, apparently, to help.

This is what Jesus asked of us.

And then he said, "What you do for the least of these, you do for me."

Now I was pretty psyched.

I was very eager to be useful in the world --

I think we all have that feeling.

And also, it was kind of interesting that God needed help.

That was news to me,

and it felt like it was a very important thing to get to participate in.

But I also learned very soon thereafter

that Jesus also said, and I'm paraphrasing,

the poor would always be with us.

This frustrated and confused me;

I felt like I had been just given a homework assignment

that I had to do, and I was excited to do,

but no matter what I would do, I would fail.

So I felt confused, a little bit frustrated and angry,

like maybe I'd misunderstood something here.

And I felt overwhelmed.

And for the first time,

I began to fear this group of people

and to feel negative emotion towards a whole group of people.

I imagined in my head, a kind of long line of individuals

that were never going away, that would always be with us.

They were always going to ask me to help them and give them things,

which I was excited to do,

but I didn't know how it was going to work.

And I didn't know what would happen when I ran out of things to give,

especially if the problem was never going away.

In the years following,

the other stories I heard about the poor growing up

were no more positive.

For example, I saw pictures and images

frequently of sadness and suffering.

I heard about things that were going wrong in the lives of the poor.

I heard about disease, I heard about war --

they always seemed to be kind of related.

And in general,

I got this sort of idea

that the poor in the world lived lives

that were wrought with suffering and sadness,

devastation, hopelessness.

And after a while, I developed what I think many of us do,

is this predictable response,

where I started to feel bad every time I heard about them.

I started to feel guilty for my own relative wealth,

because I wasn't doing more, apparently, to make things better.

And I even felt a sense of shame because of that.

And so naturally,

I started to distance myself.

I stopped listening to their stories

quite as closely as I had before.

And I stopped expecting things to really change.

Now I still gave -- on the outside it looked like I was still quite involved.

I gave of my time and my money,

I gave when solutions were on sale.

The cost of a cup of coffee can save a child's life, right.

I mean who can argue with that?

I gave when I was cornered, when it was difficult to avoid

and I gave, in general, when the negative emotions built up enough

that I gave to relieve my own suffering,

not someone else's.

The truth be told, I was giving out of that place,

not out of a genuine place of hope

and excitement to help and of generosity.

It became a transaction for me,

became sort of a trade.

I was purchasing something --

I was buying my right to go on with my day

and not necessarily be bothered by this bad news.

And I think the way that we go through that sometimes

can, first of all,

disembody a group of people, individuals out there in the world.

And it can also turn into a commodity,

which is a very scary thing.

So as I did this, and as I think many of us do this,

we kind of buy our distance,

we kind of buy our right to go on with our day.

I think that exchange can actually get in the way of the very thing that we want most.

It can get in the way of our desire

to really be meaningful and useful in another person's life

and, in short to love.

Thankfully, a few years ago, things shifted for me

because I heard this gentleman speak, Dr. Muhammad Yunus.

I know many in the room probably know exactly who he is,

but to give the shorthand version

for any who have not heard him speak,

Dr. Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize a few years ago

for his work pioneering modern microfinance.

When I heard him speak, it was three years before that.

But basically, microfinance -- if this is new to you as well --

think of that as financial services for the poor.

Think of all the things you get at your bank

and imagine those products and services

tailored to the needs of someone living on a few dollars a day.

Dr. Yunus shared his story,

explaining what that was,

and what he had done with his Grameen Bank.

He also talked about, in particular, microlending,

which is a tiny loan

that could help someone start or grow a business.

Now, when I heard him speak, it was exciting for a number of reasons.

First and foremost, I learned about this new method of change in the world

that, for once, showed me, maybe,

a way to interact with someone

and to give, to share of a resource in a way that wasn't weird

and didn't make me feel bad --

that was exciting.

But more importantly, he told stories about the poor

that were different than any stories I had heard before.

In fact, those individuals he talked about who were poor was sort of a side note.

He was talking about strong, smart,

hardworking entrepreneurs who woke up every day

and were doing things to make their lives and their family's lives better.

All they needed to do that more quickly and to do it better

was a little bit of capital.

It was an amazing sort of insight for me.

And I, in fact, was so deeply moved by this --

it's hard to express now how much that affected me --

but I was so moved that I actually quit my job a few weeks later,

and I moved to East Africa

to try to see for myself what this was about.

For the first time, actually, in a long time

I wanted to meet those individuals, I wanted to meet these entrepreneurs,

and see for myself what their lives were actually about.

So I spent three months in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania

interviewing entrepreneurs that had received 100 dollars

to start or grow a business.

And in fact, through those interactions,

for the first time, I was starting to get to be friends

with some of those people in that big amorphous group out there

that was supposed to be far away.

I was starting to be friends and get to know their personal stories.

And over and over again,

as I interviewed them and spent my days with them,

I did hear stories of life change

and amazing little details of change.

So I would hear from goat herders

who had used that money that they had received to buy a few more goats.

Their business trajectory would change.

They would make a little bit more money;

their standard of living

would shift and would get better.

And they would make really interesting little adjustments in their lives,

like they would start to send their children to school.

They might be able to buy mosquito nets.

Maybe they could afford a lock for the door and feel secure.

Maybe it was just that they could put sugar in their tea

and offer that to me when I came as their guest

and that made them feel proud.

But there were these beautiful details, even if I talked to 20 goat herders in a row,

and some days that's what happened --

these beautiful details of life change

that were meaningful to them.

That was another thing that really touched me.

It was really humbling to see for the first time,

to really understand

that even if I could have taken a magic wand and fixed everything,

I probably would have gotten a lot wrong.

Because the best way for people to change their lives

is for them to have control and to do that in a way that they believe is best for them.

So I saw that and it was very humbling.

Anyway, another interesting thing happened while I was there.

I never once was asked for a donation,

which had kind of been my mode, right.

There's poverty, you give money to help --

no one asked me for a donation.

In fact, no one wanted me to feel bad for them at all.

If anything, they just wanted to be able to do more of what they were doing already

and to build on their own capabilities.

So what I did hear, once in a while,

was that people wanted a loan --

I thought that sounded very reasonable and really exciting.

And by the way, I was a philosophy and poetry major in school,

so I didn't know the difference between profit and revenue when I went to East Africa.

I just got this impression that the money would work.

And my introduction to business

was in these $100 little infuses of capital.

And I learned about profit and revenue, about leverage, all sorts of things,

from farmers, from seamstresses, from goat herders.

So this idea

that these new stories of business and hope

might be shared with my friends and family,

and through that, maybe we could get some of the money that they needed

to be able to continue their businesses as loans,

that's this little idea that turned into Kiva.

A few months later, I went back to Uganda

with a digital camera and a basic website

that my partner, Matthew, and I had kind of built,

and took pictures of seven of my new friends,

posted their stories, these stories of entrepreneurship, up on the website,

spammed friends and family and said, "We think this is legal.

Haven't heard back yet from SEC on all the details,

but do you say, do you want to help participate in this,

provide the money that they need?"

The money came in basically overnight.

We sent it over to Uganda.

And over the next six months, a beautiful thing happened;

the entrepreneurs received the money,

they were paid, and their businesses, in fact, grew,

and they were able to support themselves

and change the trajectory of their lives.

In October of '05,

after those first seven loans were paid,

Matt and I took the word beta off of the site.

We said, "Our little experiment has been a success.

Let's start for real." That was our official launch.

And then that first year, October '05 through '06,

Kiva facilitated $500,000 in loans.

The second year, it was a total of 15 million.

The third year, the total was up to around 40.

The fourth year, we were just short of 100.

And today, less than five years in,

Kiva's facilitated

more than 150 million dollars, in little 25-dollar bits,

from lenders and entrepreneurs --

more than a million of those, collectively in 200 countries.

So that's where Kiva is today, just to bring you right up to the present.

And while those numbers and those statistics

are really fun to talk about and they're interesting,

to me, Kiva's really about stories.

It's about retelling

the story of the poor,

and it's about giving ourselves

an opportunity to engage

that validates their dignity,

validates a partnership relationship,

not a relationship that's based

on the traditional sort of donor beneficiary

weirdness that can happen.

But instead a relationship that can promote respect

and hope

and this optimism

that together we can move forward.

So what I hope is that,

not only can the money keep flowing forth through Kiva --

that's a very positive and meaningful thing --