Micro-loan organization Kiva.org now lets you lend money to students and/or their families to help them get through college. At the moment there are 802 students and families from different countries looking to receive financing. With Kiva.org you can lend as little as 25 dollars at a time.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of listening to Jouko Ahvenainen, co-founder of Grow VC. They want to make it easier for web and mobile start-ups to get funding. People who have not been investing in start-ups before are also encouraged to try. With Grow VC it doesn’t matter where you reside. It is a global community. You can sign up for free, but to be able to seek an investment, invest or offer your services you pay a minimum fee of US$20 per month. Not bad. At the time of writing, investors have indicated that they have as much as US$13,698,500 available for investments.

TechCrunch: “Grow VC launches, aiming to become the Kiva for tech startups”
BBC News: “the first global crowdfunding tool for web and mobile start-ups”