Everywhere I look all I see are good places to start an organic vegan restaurant/cafe/drinks/ice cream bar. One is even right next to an organic grocery store in a high end food market (aka building filled with only restaurants, cafes, ice cream and a grocery store – all slightly expensive). I’d do it if I had the know-how. Instead I found a similar minded person and helped fund them instead.
Choquiero is an impressive vegan chocolate store that has popped up recently in Cali, USA. By store I mean a zealous vegan chocolatier named Ariel who has successfully sold chocolates for the past few months and has the intent to make it brick n mortar (shopfront) style. He needs a kiva-loan. Currently at 30% funded he has 5 days to go before his loan expires. Looking at the pics of his chocolates, and knowing first hand kiva lenders pay you back, I’m down with giving him some moolah. Check him out: https://zip.kiva.org/loans/4751, and if you get some of his chocolates eat one for me. I’ll try to get over there sometime myself but in the meantime let me live vicariously through you, oh taster of chocolates.
For those who don’t know kiva is a web based loans system allowing everyday persons to lend money to each other interest free, removing the need for a banking institutions involvement. This process has been highly successful as people from all over the world can be lender and/or lendee to anyone else anywhere in the world. To me, knowing the name and face and business my money is being lent to, knowing that they know my name and face, and personally loaning a person money (with the assistance of the internet) feels good. A bank impersonally lending my money along with countless others (or creating money out of thin air) to any cause it determines profitable for itself with heavy interest charges and unpleasant tactics for money retrieval is on the way out thanks to websites like Kiva. I like that.
I wonder if Ariel could and would mail his chocolates to Australia.
To empowering the people and to chocolate,
Summer Tay.
hashtagveganswag 