and it’s doing great! Micro-finance was the brain-child of Dr. Mohammad Yunus, who began experimenting with lending to poor women in the village of Jobra, Bangladesh during his tenure as a professor of economics at Chittagong University in the 1970s. He would go on to found Grameen Bank in 1983 and win the Nobel Peace Price in 2006. Nowadays, it’s individual people who have become micro-lenders and the astonishing thing is that in most all of the cases, the loans are all paid back. Kiva.org has become the organization that puts individuals together and according to their website, the average loan amount is about $217.16. What’s more astonishing is that these very small amounts actually engender huge change. Kiva is now partnering with Dermalogica to help spread the wealth! This is what they have to say:
“FITE is a global empowerment platform powered by Dermalogica, the world's leading professional skin care brand, and Kiva.org, the nonprofit leader in microfinance, that is designed to foster Financial Independence Through Entrepreneurship for women in the developing world. Our mission is to provide women entrepreneurs access to small loans that will help them start or grow a business; and to help educate the public at large about the benefits of empowering women entrepreneurs so that they "can hold up their half of the sky." In just the first 2 years, we aim to help at least 25,000 women in this capacity. Leading thinkers in social development, including the World Bank, hail investing in women as "smart economics," an untapped resource that can help solve many of the problems we see in our world today. Indeed, lending to women produces a positive ripple effect of improved health, education, and welfare for all household members.”
Some facts you may not know:
70% of people below the poverty line are women
66% of the work on this planet is done by women
1% - of the land is owned by women
It's the 21st century -- we must do better than that if we are to see any improvement in what is called "the human condition". We believe that the pernicious -- never-ending ills of the specie (poverty, ignorance, disease) can not only be helped by women -- but is the reason we have not solved these issues as yet. You cannot keep half the specie in a "depressed/repressed" state -- it's an imbalance that spills over in to every other area of life whether a direct correlation can be seen or not.Women are the natural born nurturers. As the statistics prove, when women are given money to start a business, the entire community benefits in a broad spectrum of ways. We must supply women with the tools and necessities that enable them to do the work they are best suited for: ensuring survival through nurturing.
Up to now, women have done an astonishing job of keeping the specie going. Against all odds and obstacles, there are billions of us on the planet. Marvelous things have been invented, living conditions are downright luxurious compared to our ancestors, but sadly that is only true for a very small minority of the global populace. We are now coming to realize that this kind of disparity between the have and have nots is unsustainable. If we are to fix the various imbalances that have arisen on the planet -- not the least of which is the ecological havoc we have caused -- then we must start with the primal issue: women. Save the women. Save the planet.
