Marcia Odell/Elizabeth Kucinich visit...

[Tom Munnecke]

Some of you may know of my interest in the work of Marcia Odell and the WORTH Women's Empowerment Program, based on savings-led microfinance.  Here is a short version  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DJ4IJZhiRo  and a long version  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqyCEAuQnr0 of her work.  She and Elizabeth Kucinich http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Kucinich are visiting me this week, and we'll be talking about social franchising models and ways of supporting her grassroots efforts in the third world.  One of the advantages to savings-led microfinance is that women learn to save their own funds and gather their own interest, keeping it all in their village, and building their autonomy, however modest it may be.  These women also go on to teach their friends this approach, and since it requires no outside capital, it can spread virally.  Debt-based microfinance, on the other hand, involves dependencies (and flow of interest) external to the village, and correspondingly increased dependency.  He concern is how to fund the infrastructure necessary to make this happen.

She will be up in Palo Alto Mon and Tues of next week, and happy to meet with anyone who would like to talk to her about this..


tom

[Peter Deitz]

Hi Tom,

I would love to have a conference call with Marcia and Elizabeth,
ideally with Christine Egger on the line. Is that something you can
help arrange? It doesn't have to be this week.

As far as funding the infrastructure is concerned, it would be cool to
setup a website similar to FreeRice (www.freerice.com). People would
play a game (think: answer questions about their own personal finance,
with adwords or an affiliate program running in a sidebar). The
proceeds from the advertising and affiliate programs could be used to
fund some of WORTH's work.

Another option would be to setup a giving platform or blog that features
exclusively non-dependency-creating programs, WORTH among them. It
would be an interesting research project to find the top 20 giving
opportunities that foster autonomy. We could put together a website,
press release, and report about the giving opportunities and invite
people to convert some of their 'dependency' fostering philanthropy to
one of the 20 featured giving opportunities.

Please pass these ideas on to Marcia and Elizabeth, and let me know what
you think.

Here's the blog entry I had written up about WORTH:
http://www.socialactions.com/pact-video-on-savings-based-micro-finance

All the best,
Peter
Tel: 718-766-5367

[Christine]

I'd enjoy participating in that call. Would be great to start
brainstorming a list of autonomy-fostering programs, although I think
we'll find there's a rich and complex scale of dependency-to-autonomy.
Will be tricky (but not impossible) to plot projects onto it, I think.

Another trick: converting dependency-fostering into autonomy-fostering
philanthropic activity... Is it possible to convert a project or
program that's already in progress, or does it require starting from
scratch? And if you start from scratch, what do you do about the
people who depend on your project? I'm not asking rhetorically. I ask
with my own projects in mind, and as someone who wants philanthropic
activity to move in this direction "gently" (without a backlash that
would pull the rugs out from those who are aid-dependent).

Christine

p.s. This and my earlier post, taken together, feel frustratingly
abstract... Might be time to leap into a Social Actions blog thread
about this stuff?

[Peter Deitz]

Hi Christine,

I'd love for this to become a blog post on Social Actions -- do you want
me to start it, or do you feel comfortable posting?

All the best,
peter

[Christine]

Hi Peter,

I can post it -- thanks for offering, and for wanting to continue the
conversation there, too --

Christine

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