None of my own, but those I sponsor through a global childrens fund.
Like the other day, I invested in Namza.
He’s a five year old kid living in a mud hut with his muslim parents and two sisters.
The fund calls it “sponsoring,” but I see it as investing in humanity.
For so little money, you can give these kids a chance to keep expanding their opportunities in life.
They get to go to school.
To buy books.
To wear shoes.
They get these things that give them the chance to start working up the economic ladder.
It is exciting to me.
The pictures, I admit, are like all the posters for adopting a shelter pet, a little fucking depressing.
But, it is uplifting to see what you can do for some kid in some country for one third the cost of one of my gym memberships back in New York that I am not using.
Basically the cost of the glove I dropped off the lift the other day, while I live in my second home and ski every day.
It’s cool to me.
That I get to see this kid’s face and say, I can do something for this one impoverished kid out of the billions of impoverished kids of the world.
If each of us rich ones would sponsor a few dozen not yet rich ones, can you imagine what we can do for their part of the world?
The other investment vehicle I like is Kiva.
There, for the cost of one of my awesome suits that is sitting in a closet back in New York with 20 other awesome suits, I can invest in democracy.
Through offering loans to local business partners all over the world, they are spreading the values of capitalism and self reliance.
It is powerful, for the cost of some Jimmy Choo leopard print shoes that I wore once and then put away with my few dozen pairs of other shoes, some kid won’t have to walk around bare foot.
That’s pretty cool to me.
And it feels good to give.
It feels good to invest in building the world that I want to live in.
One where every single one of us is born free!