Last night I was lucky enough to attend a discussion lead by someone from the Grameen Foundation. http://www.grameenfoundation.org/,The work the Grameen group has been doing to fight poverty globally over the past few decades has been groundbreaking, and since microfinance is growing in popularity abroad and here in the US it was a great chance to ask direct questions to someone from the group at the forefront of this movement.
Microfinance is, simply, the lending of small loans to the working poor - those who are a part of the workforce but have no access to credit, and therefore remain stuck with virtually no way out of poverty no matter how much they work.
Think about it - if you'd never been given a student loan, a credit card, a car loan, a mortgage - how far would you have gotten in life? For better or worse the world runs on credit, and the irony is that those with the most money have the most access to credit - but those with the least money have the least access to it....
A brilliant man named Muhammed Yunus who I had the pleasure to hear speak earlier this year, founded Grameen based on the idea that when giving to charity your dollar has "one life" - that dollar goes to the charity and then is used. But if you invest in someone - like giving them a loan to build upon their small business - your dollar can have many lives...your impact can be that much bigger.
The stats on Grameen's work have been fascinating - a 97% rate of repayment on all loans globally (!!!). The target audience for these is women, and in Bangladesh (where the foundations first began its work) to date of 7.5 million people have been given loans to start their businesses...people that otherwise had no access to credit and no way to ever lift themselves our of poverty.
Last night's session was really motivating to me as I'm moving forward with a lot of projects and plans in the next year or so....I wanted to just pass along the information about this group, and microfiance in general, since I think it is truly revolutionary and is chancing the way business is done worldwide.
If you're interested at all I totally recommend picking up Muhammad Yunus' latest book - I know "microfinance" can sound REALLY DRY (believe me I loathe discussing finance in all forms due to the boredom-factor) but this book is a fast read and really understandable as well as interesting. http://www.grameenfoundation.org/yunus_book/
Additionally, our meeting last night was held at the Australian Mission to the UN, and I was able to meet the Australian Ambassador to the UN who addressed our group, which was really exciting to a foreign-policy-junkie....but note to self for future such events - when meeting someone who's introduction begins with "Ambassador to the United Nations...." best to wear a suit. Or at least not wear jeans. Ooops.
