Micro credit
Each member that wishes to put in a few dollars does so. Anything....
nothing is too small.
Layne and I take that money and keep a journal as to who put in what as this
is a loan and not a donation. You can get your money back out as it is paid
back.
We select and lend money to (with the advice and direction from the members
involved) poor women in underdeveloped countries to start businesses, set
up stores, buy the necessary tools etc to start making money for themselves.
We do this through Kiva. Kiva is a organization that administers the
lending, collects the payback money from the clients, etc. They are a non
profit organization endorsed by Rotary International.
We then update the members as to how our clients are doing every step of the
way. Remember, we select exactly who we want to send the money to and 100%
of what we send goes to the person requesting a loan. These loans can be as
low as $30-$50 and much as a few thousand and the simple way to put it, is
these loans change lives. Many many lives.
As they start to profit form their business venture, they repay the loan
which is put into our Kiva account which we can then re-lend, or pull the
money out. 98.5% is the payback rate! That's pretty darn good.
I hope I've made this simple to understand. Please ask Layne Marshal or
myself any questions you may have. Yesterday we collected about $500 which
was fantastic. We hope to start off with a couple thousand so we will be
reminding the club next Tuesday as well. This is open to anyone...... family
members, friends, etc. I have some family and friends that have committed to
$50 each so we have another couple hundred to add to that as well.