Site of the Week: Adelante Foundation - Honduras Microfinance

Adelante Foundation features a series of stories on their microfinance programs in Honduras on their relatively new blog. Meet members of the staff, volunteers and the local clients who are harnessing their microloans to build new businesses.  You can read about preparations for Dia del Niño, or Children’s Day on September 10.

 Check out their blog.     

Get the Adelante Foundation’s Weblog widget and many other great free widgets at Widgetbox!

Kiva Communities

Kiva now offers another exciting way to become part of the microfinance community.  You can team up with friends, classmates or co-workers to form a community group that can pool money together for a loan.

A class of students can gain insight into microfinance and the challenges of the developing world by making a loan to someone thousands of miles away.

A company can gain esprit de corps by working together for a social goal of helping others with a “hand up” rather than a “hand out”.

Each micro-entrepreneur is connected to Kiva through a local field partner.  These field partners have local expertise and ongoing relations with the micro-entrepreneurs.

Whether you have been an individual contributor to Kiva or haven’t joined yet, consider becoming part of a Kiva community.

Site of the Week: See More at SeMo - Seattle Microfinance

Seattle is more than a pioneer in coffee and software - it is also a vibrant hub in the world of microfinace.

The Seattle Microfinance Blog  covers local microfinance events, microfinance job postings like Kiva Fellows, and international news such as Mercy Corps efforts to arrange micro-mentors for aspiring entrepreneurs in the developing world.

It was encouraging to see creative events such as an Olympics party that was a fundraiser for Wokai, a Chinese microfinance organization.

Has your local organization hosted any successful fundraisers or events recently?  Please leave a comment so that we can share your success and try to duplicate in our part of the global village.

How to Find Microfinance Blogs

One obvious way to find other microfinance blogs is through Google. You can also do a blog specific search on Google.

One of my favorite’s is Grameen Foundation grameenfoundation.wordpress.com. They don’t have excessive posts, so it is always something intere3sting when they do.

Technorati is one of the best places to look at top ranked blogs: it shows blogs by category, keyword and gives you an idea of how many blogs link to another blog. Here is my Technorati Profile

So check out your friends’ blogs, and blogs from their email signature. You will find out more about your friends and hopefully discover a bgreat blog.

Do you have a great blog about microfinance? Then please add your comment to this post.

Microfinance Plus - Beyond the MicroBusiness

How can the reach of microfinance expand beyond tiny loans? What are the limits of microfinance?

Most of microfinance has focused on micro-businesses with one employee. The additional income can make a great income to the family - can pay for school fees and can improve shelter and food quality. The Grameen Foundation’s progress out of poverty indices have attempted to track this progress.

Larger businesses are also needed in the mix to create jobs and fight poverty. Two notable examples created by Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus are a yogurt company in Bangladesh (Grameen Danon) and an eye care hospital. See the details in the Grameen Foundation blog.

Laura Vanderkam’s article in The American noted that researchers studying poverty in the developing world found some benefit from microfinance, but a large benefit in the creation of middle class jobs.

Dan Herman’s blog noted that in addition to microfinance, social lending in larger amounts is needed for small to medium businesses. Developing countries need these businesses and the jobs the create for a stable middle class. Dan cites an editorial by James Surowiecki about the need for social lending of up to $10,000 to create these larger businesses that create more jobs.

I would argue that microfinance is trying to meet extreme poverty right now, while forming larger enterprises and the accompanying jobs may be a longer term process. With over 1 billion people living on less than $1 per day [the World Bank’s definition of extreme poverty], there is great suffering and multiple solutions are needed. Some people work best with micro-enterprises and many people may do best with more traditional jobs in larger businesses. However, the larger businesses may take more infrastructure and time to develop. An illiterate person can run a micro-business with common sense and determination, but a larger enterprise requires more specialized skills (again, good in the long run).

Dr. Yunus has called for a “social stock market” and other venues where socially oriented investors can make loans or investments for entrepreneurs in developing countries.Poverty is an incredibly challenging problem. Microfinance can be a big part of the solution… and social lending for larger scale businesses can also be a part of the solution.

Microfinance - 5 ways to spread the word

1) Tell your friends - (in a casual way, not preachy)

2) Include your blog or a link to a microfinance organization like Grameen Foundation or Kiva in your email signature.

3) Send an e-card on special occasions, like the Grameen Foundation ecard for Mother’s Day.

4) Make a Kiva.org loan to honor or remember a friend or family member.

5) Write about microfinance on your blog

Play the Cool Duels Application to Raise Awareness for Microfinance

Online, several friends and I “fight” for GrameenFoundation.org and other organizations using the Cool Duels Facebook application.

This game allows you to raise awareness for the environment by sending EcoGifts [animated icons of environmentally friendly objects] and also raise funds and awareness for your favorite cause such as Grameen Foundation.

[Disclaimer: I developed this application, so have a bias.]

Kiva.org - My MicroEntrepreneurs Paid Off the Loan… No Surprise

My portfolio of micro-entrepreneurs came through again. I had two entrepreneurs just repay my loan. I’ll need to look for some other people to loan to on Kiva.org.

It is one thing to read about 97% or 99% payback rates in articles. It is another thing to witness firsthand that 100% of your borrowers have paid back every single payment, week after week after week. Personally experiencing repayment makes you feel part of the “success” as that person’s business must be doing well to repay the loan. And now, you have money to loan the next person.

Microfinance has a supportive culture where borrowers encourage each other to overcome sickness and setbacks. This mutual support and positive “peer pressure” achieves very high payback rates.

As Nobel Prize Winner, Muhammad Yunus, noted, there is a sub-prime crisis in the US, but micro-entrepreneurs are faithfully making their repayments at about 99%. That default rate of about 1% or less, contrasts sharply with the US mortgage default rates of 2.7% for prime, 5%+ for alt-A and 16%+ for sub-prime.

Pledge Your Tax Rebate

Alex Counts of Grameen Foundation has an interesting challenge: consider pledging all or part of your Tax Rebate.

Do you think your family is struggling? How about a family in Africa, Latin America or Asia, where they are struggling to make ends meet on just $1 or $2 a day. Higher fuel and food prices are hitting the American family hard. While for us, that may mean one less movie and downsizing to basic cable, for a family in poverty in the developing world it may be not enough food for all of the family.

So even if it is 10%, consider donating $30 or $60 to Grameen Foundation. You can use the donation badge in the upper left, or go directly to Grameen Foundation and click Donate Now.

If your budget is tight, considering making your online purchases (for things that you need anyway - buying birthday gifts for family members, etc.) to help me earn commissions, which I pledge to donate to Grameen Foundation.

Promote Microfinance on Facebook

Become a fan of Grameen Foundation, Kiva.org and other great microfinance non-profits on Facebook.

Social networking can be a great way to share your passion about microfinance with your friends.

To become a fan of Grameen Foundation, click here

There are less than 100 fans - there should be thousands. Please join today.
And keep the discussion going with the forums on the Grameen Foundation Facebook page.