Give2Asia Giving Forum

Why is the Microfinance Industry in China so far behind?

By Cissy DeLuca, Give2Asia Philanthropic Initiatives Intern

There are currently 480 million people in China without access to formal credit. According to the World Bank, poverty in China is an almost exclusively rural phenomenon with 90% of the poor population residing in rural areas. As poverty declines, the dispersion throughout villages makes it irrelevant for the government to target entire areas for poverty reduction. The need is for an approach that targets poverty at the rural household level, such as microfinance. 

The demand for microfinance, specifically microcredit services, comes from rural households, urban laid-off workers and micro-entrepreneurs. Microfinance services in China mostly consist of microcredit, which is of the highest demand, but there is also demand for microinsurance, microsavings and investment. These services are currently not commonly offered by microfinance providers, due to the slow growth of the industry. 

Ideas for the Development of Bangladesh

By Seema Khan, Give2Asia Finance Associate

Last month I attended a conference on "Ideas & Innovations for Development of Bangladesh: The Next Decade." The conference, organized by the Bangladesh Development Initiative (BDI) in partnership with Democracy & Development in Bangladesh Forum (DDBF) and the Ash Institute at Harvard Kennedy School, created a platform for discussion of development in Bangladesh from many different angles. The speakers and participants, attending from all over America and overseas as well, discussed development issues relating to governance, human infrastructure, investment, energy and the environment, and media.
 

IDE-India featured on NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

Amitabha Sadangi, a 2005 Skoll social entrepreneur and head of IDE-India, a grantee of Give2Asia, was featured in a news video on NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on September 14, 2009. NewsHour correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro reports on how India is trying to feed its growing population while maintaining the environment. The segment focuses on how IDE-India uses market approaches to help subsistence farmers become income farmers.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/indepth_coverage/social_issues/social_ent/

The Story of Huot Ravuth: A Mother’s Smile, A Son’s Dream

A young man lives at the Center for Children’s Happiness in Phnom Penh, Cambodia and leads his fellow students in many activities throughout the day. He is only 17 years old and unlike most teenagers, he has overcome incredible obstacles and willed himself to gain an education, impact his community, and live a happy, productive life. When Give2Asia Program Officer Gillian Yeoh visited CCH in June 2009, Ravuth showed her around the center and told her his life story in fluent English. 

This impressive young man, Huot Ravuth, was born on March 8, 1992 in the Kandal province of Cambodia. As a small child, Ravuth lived in the rural countryside with his family, caring for the home, cows and chickens with his siblings. Though the youngest and smallest, he also worked in the rice field, side by side with family members and other workers, carrying heavy bunches of rice.

NGOs Put a New Spin on Microfinance & the Environment

One of the many satisfying parts of working in international philanthropy is coming across young, innovative organizations that are doing new kinds of work for impoverished and rural communities.

On March 12, Give2Asia was able to feature two such organizations during a spring wine reception for our donors, friends and trustees in San Francisco.  The two groups, Wokai and Photovoices International, working respectively in microfinance and the environment, beneift from energetic, well-spoken leaders and interesting, well-executed programs.  

WOKAI

Wokai's co-founder and CEO Casey Wilson explained how her organization's programs nurture microfinance in rural China by connecting donors to small entrepreneurs to receive small loans to start their own businesses. Through online community-building, it connects individual lenders in the US to borrowers in China, who are taking their first steps toward starting or expanding a busienss. Wokai, meaning "I start," allows impoverished people in China to start their own small businesses.

This organization benefits people like Zhang Rong who borrowed a loan of $900 to open up a hot pot
stand to support her son's high school education and increase her household income. Rong is receiving more than just money, she will gain confidence, economical independence, and the ability to support her family.

PHOTOVOICES

Ann McBride-Norton of Photovoices International offered an overview of how Photovoices was conceived. She then embarked on a narrative presentation of Photovoices' project sites with an accompanying slideshow. Sites include Lamalera Village in Eastern Indonesia, Yunnan Province of China and Boti Village of Timor.

Photovoices is a project that allows indigenous peoples to communicate their culture and way of life in a universal language, through pictures. The program trains the local people to use cameras, with a few workshops on technique and composition. Then for a year, the people document their way of life. Translators come in once a month, to capture the "words" to accompany these pictorial stories. The goal of this program is to get the local voice without losing meanings and important messages often lost in verbal translation.

To find out more about these organizations and how you can help check out their sites:

www.wokai.org

www.photovoicesinternational.org