A few years ago, DrakNet started a few initiatives aimed at doing a little bit for the world, and getting our clients involved in doing a bit for the world with us. While lots of companies write checks, we wanted to choose projects that people could make some level of an investment in rather than us simply writing blog posts tooting our own horn for taking the money you gave us and donating it.

We do, though, want to toot a horn or two here and give you an update on how those initiatives are working out.

Kiva

We began lending through Kiva.org, who’s mission is to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty through microlending. The principle behind Kiva’s person-to-person micro-lending website is to empower individuals to lend to unique entrepreneurs around the globe.

We chose Kiva for a few reasons. One, alleviating poverty is always a good thing. Two, entrepreneurship is something that’s near and dear to our hearts since DrakNet is an entrepreneurship itself and we love the idea of supporting small business owners all over the world. Three, Kiva is an ongoing endeavor that we can share with our clients – like us, you can see who the loans go to and watch the course of the loan and see the updates the same as we can.  We feel that helps people feel involved in the initiative itself. (We also often solicit people’s participation by asking people to choose the next country we lend to via Twitter.)

As of the time of this writing, DrakNet has made 31 loans in 22 months (as well as giving away two gift certificates for the “winners” to loan our money themselves), far surpassing our original stated goal of one loan a month. We’ve also had five clients join us in Kiva lending, and those folks have made an additional 36 loans, bringing the total number of loans originating in one way or another with DrakNet’s initiative to 67.

Statistic Name	DrakNet	Avg. Kiva User*
Number of Loans Made	31	5.1
Number of Successful Invitations	5	0.24
Number of Loans Made by My Invitees	36	0.81
Number of Gift Certificates Given	2	0.39

We’ve really enjoyed participating in the Kiva program, and look forward to making more loans in the future.

World Community Grid

The World Community Grid brings together people from across the globe who donate their idle computer time to create the largest volunteer computing grid benefiting humanity. DrakNet was officially welcomed as a World Community Grid Partner on June 2, 2009.

Thanks to clients joining us on the DrakNet team, we’ve managed to rack up quite a bit of run time:

Team Name		Status Joined-Retired		Total Run Time (y:d:h:m:s)		Points Generated		Results Returned
DrakNet		5/18/08 – Current		1:019:05:22:53		372,810		675

The above are our overall totals, and below, you can see our statistics by project.

Statistics By Projects

Statistics Last Updated: 2/5/10 00:06:02 (UTC) [3 hour(s) ago]

Project	Points Generated	Results Returned	Total Run Time (y:d:h:m:s)
Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy – Phase 2	30,289	109	0:024:05:36:08
Help Fight Childhood Cancer	42,151	63	0:038:12:26:48
Nutritious Rice for the World	22,765	69	0:022:01:40:08
Help Conquer Cancer	78,164	134	0:077:02:14:35
Human Proteome Folding – Phase 2	83,851	132	0:097:23:22:43
FightAIDS@Home	76,271	106	0:081:04:35:07
Influenza Antiviral Drug Search	11,937	18	0:011:06:10:08
The Clean Energy Project	2,473	3	0:001:22:33:16
Discovering Dengue Drugs – Together	24,909	41	0:029:22:44:00

Our current team rank is 4,016 – keep in mind, that’s with a team of 5. Yes, just five. There are thousands of you (ok, not that many thousands, we’re a small company and all) and only FIVE people are on our team – and 2 work here!

We’d love to expand our team and rise in the rankings, so if you have a computer that wants to moonlight as a world saver and all around humanitarian, think about downloading a client and joining the Grid on Team DrakNet.

It’s far cooler than Team Edward or Team Jacob. Really!

We usually get only a small bit of information on the results of the Kiva loans that we make. In September, an essay was published on the Huffington Post outlining what a microloan did for Yenku Sesay, a Kiva loan recipient in Sierra Leona. A snippet of the essay “From Machete To Microfinance: A Double Amputee’s Recovery” by Nicholas Sabin is below, with a link to the rest of the article.

Yenku Sesay looks down where his hands used to be. He answers my question with a sickening quickness: “1998. May 6. 10am.” That was when the rebel army, led by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), invaded Yenku’s village of Kondembaya in northern Sierra Leone and took him prisoner. The rebels burned the village and gathered the civilians under the central cotton tree.

This was one of the places where the RUF began its practice of amputation on civilians during the 11-year civil war in Sierra Leone. The RUF reasoning behind the amputations was that civilians had used their hands to vote for a corrupt president and they did not deserve to keep these appendages. Yenku pleaded with the rebels not to cut off his hands. But the rebels took a certain enjoyment from the process. Each prisoner was pushed forward for his or her punishment and had to choose slips of paper in a gruesome lottery. The paper either said “short sleeve” or “long sleeve.” Yenku pulled two long sleeves. His hands were severed with a machete, first the left, then the right.

Many of the victims did not survive. Yenku would likely have soon died if his father had not taken decisive action. Yenku’s father used the family savings to hire a motorbike to take Yenku for treatment in a hospital hours away in the country’s capital city, Freetown. Though Yenku eventually recovered from the physical wounds, his life was destroyed. He was incapable of taking care of himself and eventually resorted to begging in the streets of Sierra Leone. At about 21 years old, Yenku’s daily life had been reduced to asking for handouts, with little hope of change, little chance for something better.

Were it not for a microloan, Yenku is sure that he would still be begging today. In 2006, Salone Microfinance Trust (SMT) approached Yenku about taking out a group loan with four other local borrowers. No other institutions were even willing to consider Yenku for credit because of his amputee status. However, through lengthy discussions with Yenku, SMT saw in Yenku natural business skills and a drive to be self-reliant. He was approved for 300,000 Leones from SMT, the equivalent of approximately $100 USD. Yenku used this money to develop a modest retail business. At first the business was no more than Yenku selling small items in the street, such as packaged biscuits, soaps, and other sundries. Over the past two years, by reinvesting the profits and building his credit with SMT, Yenku’s business has grown to become a small shop selling an assortment of clothing, shoes, drinks, and other packaged food products. Though his shop may be considered small by US standards, the difference it has made in Yenku’s life is dramatic.

Read the rest of the article here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nicholas-sabin/from-machete-to-microfina_b_124727.html

Today, we made a group loan to a banking group in Cambodia:

Mrs. Chhorn Chhoeurn’s Village Bank consists of seventeen members living in Peareach Village in Kampong Chhnang Province. Each member will use their loan for different purposes. Mrs. Chhorn Chhoeurn is the president of the bank and leader of this loan group.  She is 24 years old and the mother of two children who both attend the local school.  Mrs. Chhorn Chhoeurn owns a small plot land where she can cultivate rice for a living. Her husband, Mr. Chor Vy, has a small kiln in which he can produce coal to sell. In this business, he now faces a small obstacle because he cannot transport wood in order to make coal. Thus, his wife, Mrs. Chhorn Chhoeurn, decided to ask for a loan to buy a cow cart to help with transport.

This is a village bank loan consisting of mainly end-of-term loans. Nine members have end-of-term loans and the rest have monthly payment loans. Group members are not required to pay any principal on the loan until the very end of the loan term. End-of-term (EoT) loans are AMK’s main product because it is the most beneficial to Cambodia’s poor. It allows them to repay portions of the principal whenever they are financially able to do so. Most clients start to make payments many months before the end of the loan term. Almost all of AMK’s clients make their payments on time. AMK has a delinquency rate of only 0.09% and AMK has a default rate of 0% on Kiva.

You can always view all our microloans on our Kiva Lending Page.

We’ve been off almost a month and not blogging anything, so we thought we’d get back into the swing of things by telling you why we haven’t had time to blog.

But first, we’ve made two more Kiva loans, one to Emerance Bmporineza in Rwanda, and another to Margaret Tetteh in Ghana. Both were seeking a loan to expand their goods and grocery businesses. You can read about these remarkable women and their businesses at our Kiva page, along with reading about all the other loans that we’ve made all around the world at our Kiva Lender Page.

Well, for the past month, we’ve been busy. Over the summer, we hired two new staff members, Brian and Thomas, and feedback on them has been exceedingly positive! We also have a stack of applications waiting for us to get some time to go through them and bring on a few more staff members.

All upgrades this summer also went well, though some of the differences between Apache 1 and 2 caused some confusion, which is one of the reasons we did that upgrade last. We’re happy to say that all servers are running very well on the new set ups and there were a minimum of issues with the upgrades.

We’ve added a live payment page for payments with Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Discover located here: https://www.drak.net/ordering/payment.php

“Live” means that if you submit a payment that way, you will be told immediately whether your payment was approved or declined, and the card number that you submit through that page will not be put on file in any way, shape or form. In fact, we’ll never even see what number you submitted other than the last four digits of the card and what type of card it was.

Alakazam has filled up extremely fast – much faster than we anticipated. The server that we brough online now has nearly 250 installed accounts on it, which is an indication that our growth (despite absolutely no advertising other than word of mouth) is speeding up quite a bit. In ten years, we’ve grown slowly to six servers, and the last server we added at the beginning of the summer is already getting near our cut off point, which means we may be adding a seventh within the next few months should this continue.

Within the next 24 hours, we’ll be announcing who won the credits for participating in the forums on the forums, so if you haven’t joined up, you should – it was so popular that we have decided to have a monthly drawing! Participate, discuss, help and be helped and if you have posted at any time during a calendar month, your userid will be entered into a drawing for different prizes.

This month’s prize is a $25 Kiva Certificate so that you can make your own loan! Once you make your loan, you can withdraw the money and keep the cash, or keep it in Kiva and reloan!

OK, ok, we admit we’ve been playing with our new server too much and we have been totally and completely irresponsible in our quest to be good global citizens.

H. Zagou BOKOE was born in 1985; he is married and is responsible for two people. A very courageous and determined man, he has owned a shop selling paint for three years. Business is booming because he is the only one in his district and he sells good quality paint. He has a large and steady customer base. Not having enough funds, he is often short of stock, and his customers complain all the time. Faced with this situation, he might lose his customer base.

To bolster his business and to prevent his loyal customers from going elsewhere, he is requesting a loan to enable him to increase his capital and to buy paint in bulk in order to make a profit. This will improve his household’s standard of living.

Translated from French by Daniel Kuey, Kiva volunteer

Monsieur BOKOE H. Zagou est né en 1985 ; il est marié et a à sa charge deux (2) personnes. Très courageux et déterminé, il tient une boutique de vente de peinture depuis 3 ans. C’est un commerce florissant car il est le seul dans son quartier et vend des peintures et de bonne qualité. La clientèle est abondante et régulière. N’ayant pas assez de moyens, il est souvent en pénurie de stock et ses clients se plaignent tout le temps. Devant cette situation, Monsieur BOKOE risque de perdre sa clientèle.

Pour renforcer son commerce et éviter que ses fidèles clients n’aillent s’approvisionner ailleurs, Il sollicite un crédit qui va lui permettre d’augmenter son capital et d’acheter en gros les peintures pour en tirer plus de profit. Ceci améliorera le niveau de vie dans son ménage.

This is our first loan to Togo!

We’re rounding out May with three new Kiva loans – ya’ll apparently like the new PayPal subscription options!

Our first Kiva loan is to Asha Rawat, who lives in the town of Bagdol, in the Lalitpur region of Nepal.

Most people in this region run small businesses such as grocery stores, small hotels and stationery stores.

Mrs. Maharjan is a widow who lives with her two sons. Three years ago, her husband, Mr. Tilak Rawot died, giving her sole responsibility for her family. Both of her sons are in school, one in the 10th grade and the other in the 6th.

Mrs. Rawot opened a small hotel three years ago. She also runs a shop where she sells different types of Nepali food, along with tea and coffee. She has applied for a $225 loan to buy food supplies for this business.

Our second loan was made to Margaret Aidoo of Ghana.

Margaret Aidoo is a fifty two year old widow and mother of five children. She believes in hard work and dedication and that is the secret of her success. She owns and operates a local restaurant and sells local foods like fufu, banku, ampesi, and rice balls.

Fufu is prepared from pounded cassava and plantain and eaten with soup. Banku is prepared from milled maize grains and eaten with hot pepper or soup. Ampesi is a boiled plantain or yam and is eaten with any stew.

She wants to use this loan to buy more raw materials, like bags of maize, baskets of cassava, plantain, meat, fish, vegetables and firewood. She belongs to the community group called Nyame Boafo Trust Group. In this group, members guarantee for one another as social collateral and act as peer pressure to repay the loan.

And our third loan is to Teodora Bautista Cristóbal of Mexico.

I have already started building my home but I lack the materials needed to finish it. I need finishing liquids and bricks for some rooms. I’m requesting a loan of $1,2000 so I can complete construction.

Translated from Spanish by Marty Greenstein, Kiva Volunteer

Tengo ya tiempo que empecé a construir mi casa pero me esta faltando material para terminarla, me esta haciendo falto los acabados y la losa de algunos cuartos. Es por eso que solicito un préstamo de $1,200.00 dlls. Para terminar la construcción de la vivienda.

Our second loan of the month is being given to Abbass Maatouk of Southern Lebanon.

Abbass is a 37 year old man. He has one child. He lives with his family in southern Lebanon, in Nabatieh.

Abbass is a car blacksmith. This is the sixth time he has asked for a loan from Al Majmoua. With the loan, he is planning to develop his business by starting to sell cars, in addition to doing his work as a blacksmith.

In less than two months, your PayPal payments have made 5 loans to 5 people from places as diverse as Lebanon, Tajikistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Nigeria, and Mexico. We’ve made loans to fix cars and build houses as well as to purchase food and clothing and cars to expand businesses all over the world, and we’ve been joined by one of our clients, who’s made four loans as well! Nice going, folks!

To view updates on how all our loans are doing at any time, be sure and drop by our Kiva Lender Page.

We’re going a little closer to home for our first loan for May of 2008 – in fact, very close to home, as we’re in the Austin, Texas area and our first May loan is to Luís Antonio Medina Pérez of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, just a four hour drive south on I-35 from us.

Luís is seeking a loan not for a business, but to begin to build a house on a plot of land that he owns for himself and his family.

I have a plot of land where I want to start to build my house, but I lack the materials and, as I am paying rent, I can not build and pay rent at the same time. I request a loan of $1200 in order to start to build a house.

We picked Luís because his kiddo’s really cute, and we’d love to see this family in a house of their very own.

So far, DrakNet has made four loans to people all over the world – what we had intended to do only on a monthly basis has turned into a near weekly endeavor as our clients have responded with enthusiastic PayPal payments, and some of our affiliates have chosen to donate their affiliate fees to our Kiva program as well, quadrupling what we thought we would be able to do.

We want to thank you all so very much for responding so enthusiastically to this new program, and making this a really neat group philanthropic endeavor that gets everyone involved in these folk’s lives on such a personal, direct level. We also want to thank Kiva for coming up with such a great way to help our fellow man, person to person, when so many philanthropic endeavors are faceless and uninvolved – as well as for giving us permission to do this publicly as a company.

Thanks, everyone!

DrakNet’s made our third Kiva loan of the month!

We noticed that we were loaning almost exclusively to women so far (which, since this is a woman owned company isn’t exactly surprising), and we didn’t want to be sexist so we looked for a man from a new geographical area that we hadn’t loaned to yet.

For our last Kiva loan in April (we think) we chose Farhod Khomidov from Isfara, Tajikistan.

Farhod Khomidov is 27 years old. He is married with two kids.

Farhod provides taxi services with his vehicle. He has been in this business for five years. Farhod is a rather diligent and hard-working young man. He is ready to work from early morning until late at night in order to keep his customers and obtain new ones.

Now, Farhod’s car needs repair. That is why Farhod requests 600.00 US Dollars for a term of 12 months. Farhod has proven himself as a reliable client and promises to repay the loan in a timely manner. He thanks all who support him.

We chose Farhod because we’ve experienced the pain of car repairs (as well as the pain of having them cost more than you have to spend) and could sympathize greatly – and when we experienced it, our family’s life didn’t depend on the car working to make a living.

We’ve also had news on the first loan we made to Amela. Her loan has been disbursed to her and Zene za Zene International will begin posting updates to the site regarding how she’s doing.

We’ve made a second Kiva loan in April thanks to an upswing in PayPal payments before end end of the month!

Our second loan of April 2008 is to Bridget Uhebagwi of Nigeria:

Bridget Uhebagwi is a typical business woman. She sells bread in Ireke Community, Lagos State, Nigeria. She was born there and lives there even now. Bridget acquired her business skills many years ago and has been in this business since1988. At 53 years of age, with 8 children, she still has the energy needed for business. According to her, selling bread is the only skill she has acquired and, she treasures it. She is requesting a loan of $700 to buy more bread to sell.

We’ve chosen Bridget because the woman has eight children, and runs a business. I only have one kid and own a business, so her stamina is something I admire greatly – and envy quite a bit!

To read more about Bridget, you can visit her loan page here (she still needs more lenders!), or you can keep up with all our Kiva loans and their progress by visiting DrakNet’s Kiva Lender Page.

So, we got this blog up, and started writing in it, and realized it would be somewhat boring if all we ever did was write about tips and tricks for your web site because, frankly, DrakNet does stuff that’s a lot more interesting than just that.

One of the things that kind of defines us is how much free stuff we give away. When other hosting companies give discounts, we go a step further and host a large number of non-profits at absolutely no hosting charge at all, and as a consequence, we have a large client base of do-gooders that are clients only in the service sense of the world because we, and our paying clients, contribute to their voice and their mission. This category of posts is going to profile some of them, as well as some of the things that they do, as well as expound on why we decided to do them.

Our first post is going to introduce a monthly feature here – recently, DrakNet began charging fees to clients that pay via PayPal and who refuse to put credit cards on file. It makes our life a tad bit harder but we understand that some folks prefer it and most folks were willing to grumble a little and pay that fee. Hopefully, this will make you feel a little better about what we’re doing with that bit of PayPal cash we get.

First thing in the morning, I make current event rounds on the Internet, and that includes a stop at CNN. This week, I read an article on a non-profit called Kiva that makes micro-loans to entrepreneurs in developing countries thanks to investors in the United States and abroad. For as little as $25, you can contribute to bettering the life of someone living in a poverty stricken country directly. With Kiva, the rate of return is Karma – this isn’t something you do to make interest. It’s something you do to make the world a better place. And lucky for me, they prefer PayPal payments.

So, after perusing their web site, DrakNet has signed up as a Kiva Lender. Once a month, we’ll take those Alternative Payment Fees in Paypal, and lend them to a struggling entrepreneur in a developing country. We’ll profile who we chose, and why, in a blog post, and you can visit our Lender page at any time to see who your TOS-Breaking has helped.

For April, DrakNet has chosen to lend to Amela Colic:

Amela is 24 years old, a married woman from the town of Zenica. Her husband is a seasonal worker and he can earn approximately 700 KM (about US$ 550). Amela works at the market selling clothes. This is her first loan in the amount of US$ 1200 and Amela plans to use it to buy additional clothing for sale. Her goal is to invest the money in new clothes, and to earn additional money for her and her husband.

We’ve chosen Amela in honor of one of our more famous hosted sites, Skippy’s List. Skippy’s List was written when Skippy was stationed in Bosnia and “was bored”. It became somewhat of an Internet comedic phenomenon over the years (even before the term viral was coined), coming and going in waves of popularity. One of its most recent waves of popularity happened to be on Digg and thanks to Skippy’s List, we found out that our company actually can handle the Digg Effect with some panic, but while still serving pages for everyone on a shared hosting platform – something not a lot of hosts achieve.

We wish Amela luck, urge you to visit Skippy’s List if you have never read it, and hope that you enjoy the new monthly feature. If you would like to become a Kiva Lender, drop us a comment or send us an email, and we’ll send you an invitation so we can keep track of, and profile, what all our folks are doing.