SOU Men's Basketball Fighting Poverty with Kiva and KIND
ASHLAND – The Southern Oregon men’s basketball team is putting its skills to work fighting poverty worldwide through international charities Kiva and KIND.
The SOU coaches and players run Saturday morning clinics for kids in the Rogue Valley, charging nominal fees to cover equipment costs. This year, the team decided to use some of the money to benefit people in need across the globe through a pair of international charities.
"Part of our responsibilities as educators is to help open up the world for our students,” SOU head coach Brian McDermott said. “Most of our kids have a pretty good life, but there is a big world out there where that isn't necessarily true. So we set out to find a way that we could educate our guys about how some people live and at the same time help those people work toward a better life.”
Kiva is a non-profit organization that connects people worldwide through small loans. The organization works with a network of microfinance institutions to find people in need of loans to fund small business and education ventures in third-world countries, and allows individuals to lend as little as $25 to help cover the cost of the loans. Since Kiva was founded in 2005, nearly 700,000 people have participated to help loan nearly $300 million to people in 61 different countries with a 98.9 percent loan repayment rate, according to the Kiva website.
As a team, the Raiders picked four different people from Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Lebanon and helped fund loans to cover everything from bakery products to wood and dressmaking materials. The team will have the opportunity to track the status of the loans through Kiva as they are repaid over time.
“The really cool part is that we are just helping them help themselves, and that all the money gets paid back,” McDermott said. “When it is repaid in full we can re-loan the money. So over time, we will continue to add money to new loans and then re-loan those being paid back. Next year’s team will be able to pick up where this one left off so the group of people we will impact will continue to grow.”
Junior guard Taylor Roos echoed McDermott’s sentiments, saying that “it just feels good to help people who are less fortunate, especially when you can help them help themselves.”
Along with the four Kiva loans, the Raiders also chose to work with the KIND Fund, a joint cause between MSNBC’s “The Last Word” program and UNICEF. The fund, which is an acronym for “Kids In Need of Desks,” focuses on providing desks to students in Malawi to assist the learning process. Only 20 percent of students in that region have access to desks, according to the fund website, and a $48 donation pays for the manufacture of one desk that will seat two students. The Raiders donated enough to cover two desks.
"Since education is one of the greatest tools to fight poverty, our team is helping fight one of the world’s biggest problems,” McDermott said. “Choosing these two methods allowed our players to impact other lives in ways that we could see and feel. It made getting out of bed on Saturday mornings easier!”
For more information about Kiva, visit http://www.kiva.org
For more information about KIND, visit http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40558738/