And the winner of YDC 96 is...................................

[HerMajesty]

Hahahah-vegetarian!!

Congrats! Well-deserved!

[maroy41]

[cornishmaid1961]

Well done Kim.
So what's it going to be for YDC 97 ?

[Tropical_Trish]

Well done Kim, many congrats.

[StClaresHospice]

Well done Kim, many congrats.

well done Kim good luck for ydc 97 and many more sales to come

[meebo1]

Congratulations. And I have just received a box full of goodies!

[StClaresHospice]

Hi everyone its cath from st clares. First time winner got no idea which charity to choose

all suggestions welcome. Please help.

[cornishmaid1961]

Hi everyone its cath from st clares. First time winner got no idea which charity to choose

all suggestions welcome. Please help.

Hi Cath, It was Bykimbo that won YDC96, read the first post in this thread. I expect she will tell us soon what she has chosen for next month.

[suesjools]

Congrats Bykimbo, well done!

Best wishes for many sales to all,

[bykimbo]

Thank you all very much indeed. Well chuffed, and many thanks to my lovely bidders and buyers.

Right then, next time...

This is my idea, but if it's not popular I'll be happy to go with a democratic view.

There is a site called Kiva that provides loans to poor people around the globe to help them support themselves, rather than just survive on hand-outs. Individuals or groups of people (teams) put money into a pot and then it's loaned out to support anything from a Fisherman needing nets in South America somewhere, via African schools needing books, to East Asian stall holders needing to buy stock. The great thing is it's a *loan* so once the money's in the pot, it keeps going out and coming back and going out and doing more and more good.

I have made some time ago a team called eBid (funny that ) and you can see it here: http://www.kiva.org/team/ebid

What I propose is that this month I will nominate Kiva, and money will put put into the pot. People can either join Kiva themselves (or may already be members) and pay their owing amounts straight in, or can pay it to me and I'll feed it into the pot. As far as I can see this should all be transparent so you can see the money being loaned out via the team to the total value raised the first go around. After that I'll just relend it as it becomes available (repaid) and it's up to you if you're interested enough to monitor the team/site and see it continue to work. We haven't tried anything like this before, and I thought it might be interesting - though there is a certain amount of "hope it works" in the theory, of course.

Anybody who is already on Kiva or wishes to join can be added to the team. I've already made a couple of loans in the name of the team as you can see via the page I gave.

That's the idea. What do you think, everybody?