Thanks for your thoughts. I’ll be checking out your site…

I think Kiva.org is an example of what happens when people think innovatively about information technology and charitable development. I long for the day when more charitable organizations overcome the “dirty money” mentality that often forecloses their thinking in similarly creative ways. When that day does arrive, innovators like Google and Apple will be able to work with the Kiva’s of the world, to leverage IT in even more spectacular ways.

Imagine for example, the power of Google Earth and Google’s newly acquired YouTube video resource, wedded to Kiva’s grassroots organization and to Apple’s iTunes audio-visual vending model:

Here, you would be talking about a micro-lending infrastructure joined to a media production component that documented locally, the progress of that small well digging project, or crafts collective, this through miniDV. This rich media content would then be provisioned to donors via some iTunes-esque facility, as a premium for donations to the respective projects. With all the convergence that’s happing with media formats, from PDAs to HDTVs, here’s a model to satisfy an industry starved for content; “reality TV” that would remediate hunger, podcasting that would heal… and profitably so.

The Whole Other World Catalog is a first step towards linking such a media-driven charitable funding model, in this case, to an online, geo-navigable directory of cultural, ecology and humanitarian projects, where people are able to identify projects by geography and category.