Cupcake Kings Go Global, With a Little Help From Joel

A Nicaraguan baker gets a microloan from Joel — with some strings attached

Illustration by John Ueland for TIME

Anyone can lend money; I am able to lend genius. So when I started making small loans to Third World entrepreneurs through the nonprofit website kiva.org I felt as though I wasn't doing enough. That's why a few weeks after I sent $25 to a baker in Nicaragua, I decided I needed to stop being a silent partner and start calling him all the time with my ideas.

Unfortunately, Freddy Antonio Castillo Luna doesn't have e-mail or a phone in his bakery-home outside Managua. So I had to get a Kiva volunteer to go there with a cell phone...

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