Micro Finance As Part ot the GMP Plan   

While there is no one silver bullet for ending global poverty, the GMP will attempt to incorporate every reasonable available plan consistent with our central spiritual goal of making this approach to the Global Marshall Plan one that reflects a spirit of generosity, caring for others, respect for the traditions and cultural sensitivities of the various places the program is implemented, environmental sensitivity, and a desire to use the program of the GMP to show that love can prevail on earth and among all  peoples. 

Micro finance is one possible way to approach improvements in the economic well-being of many on the planet, so we highlight it as an important strategy component of the NSP's Global Marshall Plan. 

Join us at the Global Microcredit Summit
November 14-17, 2011 in
Valladolid, Spain
 
San Diego Union Tribune
 
A holiday gift of second chances
BY SAM DALEY-HARRIS
MONDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2009

As we gather with family and friends for the holidays, many of us search for the deepest meaning of this season. Sometimes that meaning can be found in the most unlikely places, places like the slums of Nairobi, Kenya, where Jamii Bora, a microfinance program, offers loans to people who have been beggars, prostitutes, thieves and gang members. Along the way, Jamii Bora has learned that some of the best gifts aren’t given, but are earned through the grace of a fresh start or a second chance.

Just months after the postelection violence that engulfed Kenya two years ago, Jamii Bora received funds to rebuild one of the markets that had been destroyed by fire in the deadly rioting. Jamii Bora, which means “good families”, decided it had to find the rioters and enlist them in rebuilding the market they had destroyed.

This was a seemingly preposterous proposition, even in the world of microfinance – which knows a thing or two about defying conventional wisdom. For most microfinance institutions, just finding the perpetrators of the destruction would have been a dangerous, if not impossible, task. Convincing them to rebuild what they had destroyed would seem to be an act of futility.

But believing in the impossible comes naturally to Jamii Bora, whose staff are all former members who have used Jamii Bora’s combination of savings and microloans to leave behind their lives as beggars, prostitutes, and thieves – lives that at one time were mired in extreme poverty. What they didn’t leave behind, however, were their deep roots in the community.

Jamii Bora’s staff was able to find the leader of the gang of 200 that had destroyed the market and talked with “the general,” as he is known locally, about helping rebuild. When he first met Ingrid Munro, Jamii Bora’s founder, he told her he was upset with her staff when they first spoke with him because they didn’t seem to realize how dangerous he was. But through persistence they were able to convince the general and his gang to aid in the reconstruction of the market, paying them to guard the materials at night and help rebuild during the day.

After the construction was completed the general and a third of the gang joined Jamii Bora. The others were still skeptical about microfinance, but they were intrigued as they watched the general build a legitimate business constructing cases that children use to carry their books and other materials to school.

Recently the general told Munro that he hadn’t gone to his home village for 13 years because his mother was so ashamed of him. But he had just gone home for a visit and his mother cried for three days because she was so happy about how he had turned his life around.

There are many visions for microfinance, including this one: providing microfinance for redemption. The dictionary defines redemption as restoring one’s honor and worth, setting one free. Isn’t that the highest vision for all of development: assisting people in restoring their honor and worth – setting them free from the bondage of poverty?

The general’s story of redemption isn’t an isolated case. Ask Munro to describe other Jamii Bora members and she’s likely to tell you about Wilson Maina. Maina was a thief, one of the most wanted criminals in the Mathare Valley slum. After saving $10 (none of it from stealing, a condition set by Jamii Bora) he received a $20 loan. Today he has four businesses and has convinced hundreds of youth to get out of crime. Now that’s a return on investment that the world desperately needs.

What are the ways in which each of us is held captive? Are we held captive by hopelessness about ending global poverty or making a difference? These stories of microfinance offer us the gift of redemption, the chance to be set free from apathy and make a fresh start in working for a more prosperous and peaceful world.

From April 7-10, 2010, Munro will welcome 2,000 delegates to Nairobi for the Africa-Middle East Regional Microcredit Summit in her role as chair of the summit’s National Organizing Committee. Let’s hope that we are all able to welcome the gift of redemption into our lives and into the world this holiday season.

Daley-Harris is founder of the Microcredit Summit Campaign, which seeks to reach 175 million of the world’s poorest families with microloans, and of RESULTS, which seeks to create the political will to end poverty. For more information, go online to microcreditsummit.org, or to results.org. Daley-Harris can be reached at samdharris@microcreditsummit.org.

Khaleej Times
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
 
Slumdog Entrepreneur
 
Sam Daley-Harris

22 February 2009
 
When my wife and I slipped into our theatre seats to watch Slumdog Millionaire, we braced ourselves for a journey into urban slums, a world inhabited by over one billion people globally.
But unlike the movie-goers in the theater that night who pinned their hopes for one chai wallah (tea seller) escaping the horrors of the slums of Mumbai, India, on the long-shot odds of his winning the Indian version of ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire’, we knew that right now there is a tool that has helped not just one movie character but more than 100 million of the world’s poorest people actually begin to escape the worst devastations of poverty.

That opportunity is not a game show but micro-credit — small loans to start or expand businesses like selling tortillas or cell phone time to your neighbours. And if there was an Oscar for assisting beggars, thieves, and prostitutes to find a dignified route out of the slums, I’d know where to look for the winner.  I wouldn’t look in the cool dark of a movie theatre, but in the bright, hot sun of Nairobi where you can see the success of entrepreneurs in the urban slums, Jami Bora’s “slumdog entrepreneurs.”  Jamii Bora, which means good families, is a Kenyan microfinance institution that has grown from lending money to 50 women beggars 10 years ago to serving more than 200,000 members 
today.  One of those entrepreneurs is Joyce Wairimu.

Wairimu was one of the 50 women beggars who started Jamii Bora with founder Ingrid Munro in 1999.  Munro calls Wairimu one of the fast climbers out of poverty.  How fast?  In 10 years Wairimu has built six businesses and employs 62 people.

Another of the fast climbers is Wilson Maina. Before Jamii Bora, Maina was a thief, one of the most wanted criminals in Mathare Valley slum.  Starting with a loan of US$20, Maina has built four businesses and a new life for himself and his family.  Along the way, he has convinced hundreds of youth to get out of crime.  Now that’s a “lifeline” that really matters.

Munro didn’t stop at proving micro-credit to help the poorest slum dwellers.  She decided to build a town with decent housing and business space for her entrepreneurs.  “Every poor person’s dream is to move out of the slums,” Munro says, “not patch up 
the slums.”

On January 30th, that’s exactly what happened when the first 246 families moved out of the slums and into the newly created Kaputiei town with nearly 1,800 families to follow.  For the same monthly mortgage they had paid for their one-room shacks, each family now lives in a home with two bedrooms, a bath, a kitchen and a living room.  But this is ultra sub-prime lending that works because in order to qualify for a mortgage the residents have to have successfully repaid three micro-business loans.

Where does Munro’s capacity to innovate and defy conventional wisdom in the microfinance field come from?  It started 20 years ago when she and her husband adopted three street children. It was in the fertile ground of Munro’s relationship with the mothers of her sons’ friends in the streets — women who were beggars — that her profound insights would grow.

When Munro, a Swedish trained architect and urban planner, retired from the African Housing Fund in 1999, she thought she would also retire from the little group of 50 beggar women with whom she had been working.  But when the women pled with her not to leave them, Munro agreed to stay and insisted that they must lift themselves out of poverty.

For Munro that meant the women had to start developing the discipline of saving on a regular basis.

She had them come every Saturday with about US50 cents in savings. When they deposited their 50 cents she would give each of them two scoops of corn and one scoop of beans for free. She admits now that for those first two months she was tricking them into saving with the lure of free corn and beans. After two months, the bags were empty, but the beggars continued to save and the free corn and beans never returned.

Another of Munro’s breakthroughs is that all Jamii Bora staff are former members, previously destitute themselves.  Winning the war against poverty won’t come from summoning the right “final answers” to a handful of trivia questions to strike it rich on a game show.

Winning the war against global poverty will come when we realise that we have one of the answers — micro-credit — and summon the political will to lift up those micro-credit programmes that have figured out 
how to reach the world’s most destitute people. This is a final answer we can 
stand behind.

Sam Daley-Harris is Founder of the Micro-credit Summit Campaign, which seeks to reach 175 million poorest families with micro-credit www.microcreditsummit.org and of Results, which seeks to create the political will to end poverty www.results.org

 

 
Join us at the Global Microcredit Summit
November 14-17, 2011 in
Valladolid, Spain