I thought I’d share an email I received from Kiva today about one of my loans.

Dear Andrew Hennessy,

This is an update on your loan to Em Ath in Cambodia.

On a small island on the Mekong River, I visited Em Ath on a Wednesday morning. With me was Som On, a friendly credit officer working for MAXIMA, one of Kiva’s four partner microfinance organizations in Cambodia. As a Kiva Fellow at MAXIMA, I travel with loan officers and company employees to meet borrowers and see the impact of microfinance firsthand.

When Som On and I arrived, two of Em’s sons were just getting back from school. In Cambodia, most children go to school six days a week from 7:30 am through 11 am, when they return home to help their families with their chores and household duties. The two children quickly changed from their school uniforms and came downstairs to watch us speak with their mother about her loan, along with the youngest brother. The oldest sons are age 20 and 17 and both work in construction. Em’s husband was out of the house, helping his nephew build a storefront to start a grocery stand on the island.

This is Em’s third microfinance loan with MAXIMA, and it is for $1000. Em and her husband are in the business of buying and selling firewood. Her husband cuts the wood and Em buys his and the wood from other woodsmen to sell in the nearby Kandal province.

With past loans, Em and her husband have purchased a gasoline-fueled chainsaw for $600, which her husband uses to cut wood safely and efficiently. With the current loan, Em bought more firewood from the other villagers to sell. Em can get about $100 worth of firewood from one tree, which she gets from the Koh Dach Island and the islands and villages around it. As their business grows and scales, the Ath family can increase profit, and in turn, improve their standard of living.

With the money they make from their firewood business, Em and her husband provide for their family. They send their two school-age sons to school, for 500 Reil a day (about 12 cents in $USD) each. Em had one of her sons run and bring his father back to the home, so that he could show Som On and me his lumbar and the chainsaw he purchased. This video shows Som On and I at the Ath household: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shYGkT1_e_A

The Ath family is hard working and kind, and I am happy that their loans through MAXIMA and Kiva are helping them.Before leaving to visit more Kiva Borrowers in the village, I thanked Em for her time and wished her success: “Some nang lo’ah!” – Good luck!

Thanks for lending to the world’s working poor on Kiva!

Best Wishes, Kiva Staff

Fran West is a pilot, adventurer, photographer and motivational speaker. She was the first woman pilot to circumnavigate Australia in a light aircraft and has taken some stunning photographs along the way. Fran now shares her adventures through her motivational presentations and has a range of cards, CDs, DVDs and a book showcasing the spectacular coastline of Australia.

Over the last week the Bruny Island Charters and Tasman Island Cruises websites have been updated with a whole new look, heaps of new information and increased interactivity. For those of you who have been on the cruise, you can upload your photos into our Photo of the Month competition. Or simply take the opportunity to tell us what you thought of the cruise.

Feel free to add your comments about what you think of the site’s updated look and feel.

Today is an exciting day. Microsoft has announced Intellisense integration with jQuery in Visual Studio 2008, which is a real step forward. I love jQuery, I think it’s an excellent tool which makes for much easier manipulation of DOM in JavaScript. Plus, a number of the extensions available are really fantastic. Having jQuery in Visual Studio really gives great weight to ASP.NET as a platform.

My latest website, this time for food writer Matthew Evans, went live last month.

Matthew is the author of Kitchen Basics, Never Eat Chicken on a Monday and The Weekend Cook. He is a former food critic and currently writes a column that appears in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald every Saturday. You can also find him in Grazia magazine where he is the food editor.

The new website for the Captain Cook Caravan Park and Ol’Kid Fishing Charters has just been launched. If you are looking for cabin, caravan or camping accommodation on Bruny Island they offer modern facilities right on the beach-front at Adventure Bay.

Social bookmarking site Delicious has finally launched version 2 of their popular service. The online world has been waiting for this update for months now and the project has seen delay after delay. However, this update is little more than an update to what was a very basic interface. Let’s hope there’s some new features on the horizon…

I know one of the hardest things in business can be getting everyone together in one place for a meeting. Everybody has a million things to do and our diaries fill up fast. There are a lot of sites out there to “assist” in setting up a meeting, however most of the time they are more help than good. Signing up to things is a hassle and puts people off side pretty quickly. Before you know it, people are using different services - and you need a meeting organiser just to organise a meeting!

When Is Good aims to put a stop to all that and it looks very promising. The first thing you notice about the site is you don’t have to sign up. That’s a winner right there. Secondly, it’s just plain simple. You go on, click the times you are available and it sends out invitations to everyone who you’d like to come to the meeting. Invitees go and click on the grid when they are available and the service will work out a suitable time for you all to meet.

Stuck inside working all day? Have you ever wanted to look up and see sky? Well maybe now you can thanks to The Sky Factory.

A big congratulations to Bruny Island Charters who were last night named First Generation Family Business of the Year for Tasmania. Manager and Founder Robert Pennicott also won the Individual Entrepreneurial Award and a national nomination for the Jason Lea Award. The company will go on to compete for national awards later this year.