By Susan Ellis of Keylifejourneys

On Friday I entered the story of my involvement with Kiva.org and how I can join with a few others from around the world to contribute to a micro loan to assist in raising someone out of poverty. I documented that there is a 97% repayment rate.  

Because of these repayments, I have a credit balance with Kiva. So today I used it to send off $25 to an entrepreneur in Senegal.  She still needs another $275.00 to complete the loan request of $525. The lady is married and responsible for 7 children. She is requesting this loan to expand her pig-raising business. She wants to buy pigs, raise them, and re-sell them. Her income will allow her to contribute to improving living conditions for her family.

On Saturday afternoon I received an email from Kiva saying that the rest of the needed loan had been raised and it was already on its way to Senegal. Who knows, today she could be buying her pigs. She has pledged to repay the loan in six months.

Isn't there something for us to learn from this? It seems that when we were co-opted into the world of being employees we lost the survival edge. Being paid money for our time we converted it into material possessions. We collected and we hoarded and our esteem rested on the amount of stuff we owned. So important was it for us to be seen to be having stuff that we bought it on credit. We know the end of the story. But my lady bought pigs with her credit. She still dreams for what we dream - to contribute to improving living conditions for her family.

She knows that if the market does not want fat pigs, she will lose and must turn to another way of converting her work into the things she needs. If she continued to make pigs fat when there was no market she would be deemed to have a poor head for business. She will pay the price and lose and the loss will be felt by her family. That makes sense to me.

I can't understand our traditional business practices. When manufacturers make products people don't want to buy, if the CEOs make poor business decisions leading them to lose money, they should be held accountable to their family - their employees. Likewise the employee must not take more from the employer than the market will bear.

I'd like to think in the consciousness shift many of us are trying to be part of, we would try to create win-win situations. In our culture it seems that each person getting ahead is doing it at the expense of another who must lose. I am reckoning that my lady in Senegal already knows there are people wanting to buy her fattened pigs. I think she is going to get ahead in her win win world. Now what about us?