Microfinance

We had this amazing brains storming session today, Pankaj, one of the folks we have been having in our volunteer program came up with this amazing concept of launching a micro credit program for Creative minds. I was like, wow! Let’s talk about it. Apparently, Pankaj had worked for a little while with the Grameen Microloan program, and they were having this initiative to extend microloans to school children. I hadn’t heard about microfinance so much, and wanted to know more. I learnt that Mohammed Yusuf, a professor of economics in Bangladesh began this organization to provide collateral free loans to villagers who wanted to start their own business, since banks were unwilling to lend such small sums of money to them. Apparently, this turned out to be a very successful model.
I was real curious how this will work out for us! We obviously can’t give loans to college kids and wait for 4 years for them to repay! We probably have to do this for school kids, and maybe plan it for a semester wise period, Anyway we were talking about these ideas for almost an hour! Sounded really exciting, might launch a pilot project. I do know some kids in Chennai who were looking for sponsorships, might talk to those parents next week.
Anyway, planning to read up on Mohammed Yusuf’s book “Banking for the Poor” over the weekend. Might get some more insights!