We’re floored on a daily basis by students who have struggled against all odds to finish their education, lenders who time and again come back to change yet another person’s life, and Fellows who dedicate a portion of their own lives to bringing microloans to more students in developing countries. It’s the students, the lenders, our partners, and our Fellows that compel us to do what we do. But at the end of the day, it’s our supporters and donors that make it all possible.

So we are thrilled to announce that Vittana’s efforts received a big boost today! Google.org announced that it will support Vittana to build 24 additional student loan programs by 2013.  This support is perfectly timed at the end of an insane year of growth. We doubled our field partners from 10 to 20 microfinance institutions over the course of 2011 – that puts us in 12 different countries on 4 continents. Whew.  And after taking a little more than two years to reach our 1,000^th student, we’re on track to pass 2,000 students in December, less than six months later.

On stage at TEDx Brussels in November, Vittana CEO and co-founder Kushal Chakrabarti asked “What’s the one thing that can truly change the course of someone’s life? Education.” We’re thinking big. We’re out there to start a global market for education microfinance – one that will reach 1 million students by 2015. Because at the end of the day, we believe student microloans are the most scalable, sustainable, and impactful tool we have to fight global poverty.

So thank you to Google and to our many other donors and supporters for helping us change the conversation about global education.

As I sit here on the day before Thanksgiving, what comes to mind is the over 250 students on Vittana right now who are poised to transform their lives by continuing their education. Whether it’s Omar Ahmad‘s desire to become a civil engineer in Jordan or Lidia Severina Aban‘s goal to drive economic development in Bolivia, each one of our students has a dream. And that dream will not only change their lives, but the futures of their children and their grandchildren.

As many of you know, the past two weeks have been a rollercoaster ride as we swelled to the top 3 of Chase Community Giving – a crowd-sourced philanthropy program that allows users to vote for local charities to help them win up to $250,000 in grants. On the last day of the competition, however, we were devastated to find out from Chase that over 8,000 of our votes were considered ineligible due to technicalities in voting that they are unable to disclose to us for proprietary reasons. We have been in ongoing communication with Chase to discover why these votes have been called into question since Vittana would never engage in auto voting, robo voting, or any other means to create fraudulent votes. We were thrilled to see that our international community turned out in full force to support us and are deeply saddened by the disappointing results of this competition.

What I’m most thankful for today though is our phenomenal Vittana community of supporters and lenders. Whether you voted for us in the Chase Community Giving challenge or have lent directly to our students, you have personally made a difference in someone’s life. And for that every one of you counts.

When I see my 93 year old grandmother tomorrow, who is still full of as much gumption and drive as I can imagine she was seventy years ago, I’m going to thank her. She was the one who set the direction for my family when she graduated from college and gave each and every one of her children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren the chance for a better life. With your support, every one of Vittana’s students can turn to their grandchildren one day and ask, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

Vittana is all about great deals: we help people lend as little as $25 to fund a student’s education, enabling them to dramatically increase their earning power for themselves and their families, sometimes by 400 percent!

That’s why we were thrilled when DealPop made us their deal today. Anyone who donates $1 will be matched by another $2 from DealPop: That’s $3 that we will lend out to students for each person.

Normally our loans start at $25, but at $1, who wouldn’t give a hand up to someone so they can finish their last mile of education?

It also happens to be Social Good Day, so we have been tweeting up a storm with the #socialgood hashtag. If you’re on Twitter, let us know when you give to a Vittana student and we’ll give you a shout- out!

We have less than 80 hours to get as much out of this great deal as we can, so share it with your friends! DealPop will also give you $5 in points if your friends use your referral code when they make their donation.

Over the past week, Vittana has been the recipient of very good karma from some amazing people and organizations. So, on Good Karma Friday, we wanted to give a shout-out of thanks. We truly appreciate all of the support!

First, the BEAN Seattle team held a date auction, with all of the proceeds going towards Vittana loans. This hard-working, highly energetic, passionate group raised over $15k for Vittana students!

We were more than happy to sacrifice Kushal to the cause (Bachelor #5) and really appreciate that our friend Luis stepped up for us as well (Bachelor #2).  Two lucky ladies will definitely have great dates with our guys!

Kushal on the bidding block at the BEAN date auction

If you missed the event, you can check out the juicy details here: http://bit.ly/cJkFKw

Next, last night we held our own Vittana end-of-summer bash… just as the fall weather rolled into Seattle (yes, we planned that). Many of our lenders & friends stopped by our office to catch up, hang out, and listen to Brett, our CTO (who just happens to moonlight as a DJ) spin his music magic throughout the night. Thanks to the Vittana team for putting the party together, our own Doug McManaway for working the social media channels to get the word out, and to everyone who came by and donated!

Finally, we have another round of inspiring students on the site – individuals like Ricardo. In Nicaragua, where Ricardo lives, only 9% of men are able to finish college. That’s a statistic we all need to work hard to change – so come check out our students and kick off your own cycle of opportunity today.

Thanks to everyone who came out to the Vittana/SeaMo happy hour last Friday! You all braved a serious rainstorm and the Friday night doldrums to come meet and mingle with Vittana lenders, staff and volunteers. We all celebrated passing $100k overall, $50k in March, and helping send over 200 students to college. And we ended up raising almost $500 that SeaMo plans to lend to future Vittana students (woo hoo!).

Things got pretty crazy for a while there, so if you came and didn’t get a chance to talk to anyone from Vittana, shoot me an email – I’d love to chat. But overall, it ended up being a great night, so watch out for more in the future.

A couple of random pictures are below. I didn’t get very far with the camera this time, but promise to take more pictures in the future. Thanks again to everyone who came, and enjoy.

Party at the table

Drink specials... yum

Photoshoot

One corner of the room

Pausing the festivities for a brief presentation

Martina after her race

Congratulations to Martina Welke for her great race in the 2009 Seattle Marathon! We are humbled to have Martina as our first marathon-runner supporter. Martina encouraged her friends and family to make Vittana loans in support of her race. We are thrilled to announce that by rallying together they raised a grand total of $875 in student loans!

Thank you Martina for advocating the work that Vittana does, we really appreciate your commitment. And thank you to everyone who was a part of the Welke Team and who showed their support for Martina by making loans. It is because of individual lenders like you all that our student borrowers have the funds they need to go to school.

Check out Martina’s blog if you want to read more about her decision to run a marathon for microfinance, and her training for the big day.