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Each student creates a screencast using the padlet reflecting on following questions:

1. What did your team’s collaboration look like? Feel like? Why?

2. In thinking about the collaboration, what might you have done differently? Why?

3. Did you experiment with various methodologies for collecting and presenting your research? How? Explain fully.

hyperlinking/ embedding/ uploading

Photos of hand-written notes?

Digital notes (Google docs/ slide; Google drawings)?

Audio notes/ video notes (vlogs)?

screencasts

Sketchnotes (digital/ hand-drawn)?

Mind-maps?

Images, photos, maps, illustrations, videos?

Visual Cornell notes?

DIIGO?

4. What methodologies empowered you as a learner to gain a deeper understanding of the issue and solution? Why? How?

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Experiment with methodologies for collecting & analyzing evidence...

experiment with the padlet features to expand your thinking & learning (click on those 3 little dots on the padlet post-it)

locate reliable sources to provide relevant information to answer the questions

be sure to DOCUMENT YOUR NAME on EACH of your PADLET POST-ITS for individual accountability

hyperlink/ embed/ upload

Photos of hand-written notes?

Digital notes (Google docs/ slide; Google drawings)

Audio notes/ video notes (vlogs)

screencasts

Sketchnotes (digital/ hand-drawn)

Mind-maps

Images, photos, maps, illustrations, videos

Visual Cornell notes

DIIGO

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WHAT IS YOUR RESEARCH QUESTION & HOW WILL IT GUIDE YOU?

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WHAT IS YOUR RESEARCH QUESTION & HOW WILL IT GUIDE YOU?

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OLIVIER'S FOCUS QUESTION:How good is kickstarter when it comes to solving global economic strugles.

JUSTIFICATION: Becuase online banking is soon going to become the new form of money but not everyone can afford a phone but yo

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6 U2 Poverty & Overconsumption Summative RUBRIC, Crit. B & C 

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CONCLUSIONS (4-5)

Strengths: If supplied to the correct organisation, it can lift a budding entrepreneur out of poverty for some time on borrowed money, and then they can make their business, earn enough money to live well, and then repay the loan(s). No one suffers any major losses, and the donors actually get a profit, however small.

Limitations: When

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CONCLUSIONS (4-5)

Strengths: It's a well known websites that has helped alot of people and it has so many good people who would love to help people in poverty and it already has help 20,000,000 african farmers.

Limitations: It's really hard to get people to notice you because creating a kickstarter acount with a goal is like starting a youtube or twich channel. Not that many people are going to notice you unless you are dedacated to working on it every day.

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SOLUTION?
Microcredit.

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NOTE-TAKING TECHNIQUES:

keywords

compelling quotes

summarizing

paraphrasing

adding informative/ descriptive headings

annotating (deconstructing keywords; making connections; documenting questions; adding comments)

employing sketchnoting techniques (negative space, hierarchy, typography, images)

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SOLUTION?
Kickstarter

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WHAT IS YOUR RESEARCH QUESTION & HOW WILL IT GUIDE YOU?

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WHAT IS YOUR RESEARCH QUESTION & HOW WILL IT GUIDE YOU?

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DHRUV'S FOCUS QUESTION: How can we make sites where people can get microcredit as a donation, and how we can help the poor people get jobs and then repay the donation(maybe).

JUSTIFICATION:This will help out poor people as with the money from donations, they may be able to get education, get a job, and repay the money. This is basically like a loan system, so no one faces any losses.

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While A great platform funding many peoples dream project there is just not that many platforms stating kickstarter helping the world besides one. Echo community which states that. "KickStart International is a non-profit social enterprise with a mission to lift millions of people out of poverty quickly, cost-effectively and sustainably." But this website say that kickstarter has helped over an estamated 20,000,000 small scale farmer in africa to grow their buissness and lif style.

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How Kickstarter Changed The World: Founder Yancey Strickler on the origins of the platform

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The initial idea for Kickstarter came to Perry Chen in 2002 when he wanted to bring Kruder & Dorfmeister to play a gig in New Orleans but was unable to raise the necessary cash. If only, he thought, there was a way for all those who would have liked the concert to happen to pledge money in advance.

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KickStart International is a non-profit social enterprise with a mission to lift millions of people out of poverty quickly, cost-effectively and sustainably.

KickStart's vision of success is to take millions of people out of poverty sustainably, and in doing so, to change the way the world fights poverty. We see the untapped entrepreneurial drive in the world's poorest people and harness this potential for massive change.

An estimated 20 million small-scale farmers in Africa have access to sufficient renewable water resources to adopt KickStart's technologies on their farms and turn them into profitable businesses that generate food and income year-round.

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KickStart International is a non-profit social enterprise with a mission to lift millions of people out of poverty quickly, cost-effectively and sustainably. KickStart's vision of success is to take millions of people out of poverty sustainably, and in doing so, to change the way the world fights poverty.

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While kickstarter is able to help the world in many ways, kickstarter was made to fund filmakers designers and artist in general. In the artical How kickstart changed the world they literly say. "Kickstarter is the way artists, musicians, designers, writers, filmmakers and performers begin their creative projects." so kickstarter can be used to help and was used to help the world but it wasn't created for that purpose.

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Micro crediting is helping out impoverished people, as the small donations, which would be then repaid back, would help the person start/continue their small business. But, micro crediting is not taking out poor people and making them financially stable; it is actually "a way to expand options for poor people by offering more reliable financial services." The small loans help people in disaster areas, or simply poor people, get money so that they can "put food on the table," in times of crisis.

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Micro crediting helps poor people invest into their businesses, and make money to support themselves. But, sometimes, if you donate to the wrong micro crediting organisation, you may not be helping people in penury start their business; rather, you may be making them "plunging the poor deeper into debt." See this fact,"John Hatch, the founder of FINCA International (one of the largest microfinance institutions), has said publicly: 90% of microloans are used to finance current consumption rather than to fuel enterprise." The problems of a bad donation are that it may destroy the sustainability of a good organisation, and may slow down growth of those organisations as well. These bad organisations have been called out for "poverty washing," which is basically ineffective fighting against poverty.

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Companies are racing to add poverty-reducing microcredit initiatives to their corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. Their hearts may be in the right place, but these well-intentioned efforts can backfire.

Don't misunderstand: Microcredit can raise borrowers' standard of living and help reduce poverty. In the past three years we've brokered investments in more than 150 carefully selected microcredit programs and have seen positive effects firsthand, including improved school enrollment, women's empowerment, better nutrition, and increases in household incomes.

Yet little evidence exists that microcredit borrowers, on average, commonly, directly, and quickly escape poverty, as many assume. Poverty, as always, is resistant to silver bullets, no matter how popular and appealing to donors they are. And if a company supports the wrong microcredit program, it may not only fail to reduce poverty but also tarnish its own good name.

Consider these facts: Many heads of microfinance programs now privately acknowledge what John Hatch, the founder of FINCA International (one of the largest microfinance institutions), has said publicly: 90% of microloans are used to finance current consumption rather than to fuel enterprise. Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, of MIT's Poverty Action Lab, recently evaluated dozens of rigorous studies on the economic lives of the poor, finding that regardless of country or continent, very little of each additional dollar of disposable income is spent on any form of investment, or even on food and shelter. In Bangladesh, where in 2001 approximately one out of four households had at least one microloan, microcredit seems to have had little impact on the country's relative development performance. In 1991, for example, Bangladesh ranked 136th on the UN Development Programme's Human Development Index (a measure of societal well-being); 15 years later it ranked 137th. And aside from the shortage of data showing benefits, there is evidence that some microcredit programs may actually be harmful, plunging the poor deeper into debt.

The root challenge for CSR leaders is that microcredit, like most other social programs developed in the charity sector, lacks standardized, readily available, outcome-based measures that would enable good funding decisions. Repayment rates and other commonly reported measures tell us nothing about the impact of a program on poverty. There are a number of promising trends in microcredit, including improvements in outcome measurement and reporting, the influx of capital with rigorous financial and social-benefit requirements, and the growth of commercial microfinance organizations with the scale and discipline required to drive down the costs of service delivery. These trends are nascent, however, and expert due diligence around investment in any program is therefore essential.

What are the dangers of a bad investment? From a humanitarian perspective, donating to ineffective microcredit programs slows the growth and threatens the sustainability of the best programs. From a corporate public relations perspective, companies that make low-value or even harmful microcredit investments risk being attacked for unsubstantiated claims about the impact of their CSR activities. Increasingly, companies are being exposed for "green washing" (touting environmental programs that have little or no benefit); now they may get bad press for "poverty washing."

How can a company avoid these undesirable outcomes? First, insist on a set of clearly defined measures of success-such as income growth, quality of housing, school enrollment, and nutrition-for microcredit programs you support, and be willing to pay for the measurement. Second, invest in improving the effectiveness of microcredit-for example, by supporting vocational training and financial literacy for borrowers, improving access to technology that lowers the cost of lending and borrowing, or lobbying for regulatory changes that make starting and growing businesses easier. Third, look for opportunities to support the growth of small and medium-size companies in regions of poverty. Businesses that create stable, productive, nonexploitative jobs and vibrant local economies are the only sustainable program for mass poverty alleviation ever created.

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Companies are racing to add poverty-reducing microcredit initiatives to their corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. Their hearts may be in the right place, but these well-intentioned efforts can backfire. Don't misunderstand: Microcredit can raise borrowers' standard of living and help reduce poverty. In the past three years we've brokered investments in more than 150 carefully [...]

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"After apartheid ended in South Africa in 1994, the international development community quickly arrived with plans to promote the microcredit model." They claimed that this would bring power, new jobs, incomes and more, the "expectation of rapid progress ran high." Though that was not the case; micro crediting in post-apartheid South Africa was inflicting damage on the economy. The problems that arose were of two types; the first one, was the micro-crediting was "anti-developmental intervention," as it existed only to support the smallest money making activities. The donations were not used to invest in businesses, but to actually just support current consumptions of the poor. With the small loans being insufficient to support finance, individuals are now becoming even more poor, as they have to sell of their household items to repay the donators. "For far too many now "financially included" individuals in South Africa, using microcredit to support current spending has been a disastrous and irreversible pathway into chronic poverty."

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After apartheid ended in South Africa in 1994, the international development community quickly arrived with plans to promote the microcredit model. Proclaiming that it would rapidly bring new jobs, incomes, empowerment and dignity to the poorest black communities and townships, expectations of rapid progress ran high.

However, the microcredit medicine applied to post-apartheid South Africa has turned out to be a deadly one. It is now increasingly clear that the much-lauded market-driven microcredit model has inflicted untold damage on the South African economy and society. Concerned investors are rapidly leaving the bloated microcredit sector, with many users arguing that it is on the verge of a self-orchestrated collapse.

The microcredit-induced problems that emerged in South Africa are two-fold. First, microcredit per se is actually an "anti-developmental" intervention. For one thing, it exists on paper to support the smallest income-generating activities, but in practice is increasingly all about supporting consumption spending. In South Africa, the microcredit movement has created an incredibly risky and expensive way to support the immediate consumption needs of the very poorest.

With few poor individuals possessing a secure income stream that might ensure full repayment of a microloan - unemployment is now higher than it was under apartheid - many of the poorest individuals have been forced to repay their microloan by selling off their household assets, borrowing from friends and family, as well as simply taking out new microloans to repay old ones. For far too many now "financially included" individuals in South Africa, using microcredit to support current spending has been a disastrous and irreversible pathway into chronic poverty.

Going further, of the very small percentage of microcredit that actually does go into supporting income-generating microenterprises (as per the original model), the fact remains that the business activities that emerge are simply not the drivers of sustainable development and poverty reduction. The rafts of new street traders, barrow boys, spaza shops and the like have generated very little, if any, positive impact in South Africa's poorest local communities. Centrally, late-apartheid South Africa already possessed a very large informal economy in the black townships, one that was composed of exactly such simple low-capitalised no-growth activities.

Among other things, this existing capacity helps to account for the high rate of job and income displacement that emerged after 1994, when new microcredit-supported informal microenterprises took demand, and subsequently income, away from the rafts of already struggling businesses in the black communities. The inevitable hyper-competition that arose was one of the central causes in self-employment income falling dramatically between 1997-2003, dropping by more than 11% per annum.

This was not microcredit's intended poverty reduction so much as the intensification of poverty, suffering and deprivation among the very poorest communities forced into informal sector work. Even worse, social tensions were greatly exacerbated thanks to hyper-competition and the aggressive taking of clients away from existing businesses, while ethnically-motivated business turf wars inevitably began to rear their ugly head too.

Perhaps most importantly, the growing dominance of the microcredit model has meant that South Africa's scarce financial resources have essentially been diverted away from more productive and sustainable business activities; notably away from formal manufacturing-led SME development, which the country desperately needs. Microcredit institutions that successfully mobilise savings, remittances and public and private investment funding, and then profitably channel this largesse into microcredit applications, effectively de-fund the very enterprise sectors most closely associated with sustainable local economic development and poverty reduction.

Just as in microcredit-saturated Latin America, the programmed diversion of South Africa's scarce funds into microcredit applications has been a first-order development disaster in the post-apartheid era. The market-driven microcredit model in South Africa has progressively helped to destroy the important economic, social and institutional foundations that underpin a healthy local economy.

A further intractable problem with microcredit in South Africa is related to the extensive commercialisation that was introduced into the global microcredit industry in order to make it financially self-sustaining. Like Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke, far too many high-profile microcredit supporters and policymakers also naively bought into the myth of the free market, including its particular aversion towards robust regulation. There was hope that for-profit microcredit institutions would dutifully stick to their allotted mission and responsibly lend to the poor. However, just as in the wider economy, where the actions of the financial institutions on Wall Street brought on a global recession, the widely-held assumption that private banks and microcredit institutions would be responsible also proved to be spectacularly wrong.

Bombarded with microloans in such a way that today they simply cannot repay even a fraction of what they owe (estimates are that 40% of the South African workforce's income is spent on repaying debt), South Africa's poor are now caught in a microdebt-trap of unimaginable proportions. Only now are people realising that the real aim of the private banks and microcredit institutions in South Africa - exactly as in the case of Wall Street's infamous sub-prime lenders - was not to help their poor clients, but to extract as much value from them in the shortest time possible before leaving the sector and moving on to other fields of business.

Unfortunately, the very worst impacts of microcredit in South Africa have taken place in the poorest and most vulnerable regions, especially around the mining district of Rustenburg. Here, many of South Africa's largest and most prestigious banks opted to pour in vast amounts of microcredit in order to quickly generate profits at the expense of the hardest-working yet most vulnerable individuals imaginable. The result of pursuing this goal was massive profits for the private banks and microcredit institutions and, of course, huge financial rewards for their high-profile CEOs, but personal devastation for the vast majority of already heavily indebted mineworkers and their families. Sadly, largely in order to make additional money for its managers, even the ANC-linked and once radical National Union of Mineworkers got involved in pushing microcredit onto its poor members through its part-ownership of UBank.

South Africa's microcredit model and its supporters - much like their counterparts around the world - have been widely discredited. Extracting the poor from the grip of the microcredit movement will not be easy, however, in a country where officially sanctioned exploitation of the poorest black communities seems to remain, even under the post-apartheid government.

But the alternative is to leave things as they are and deal with an inevitable Arab Spring-style uprising, the end result of which one simply cannot predict.
Milford Bateman is a freelance consultant on local economic development in Opatija, Croatia. This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. To get more articles like this direct to your inbox, sign up free to become a member of the Global Development Professionals Network Topics

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financial inclusion - global development professionals network

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Microcredit has been a disaster for the poorest in South Africa

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After apartheid ended in South Africa in 1994, the international development community quickly arrived with plans to promote the microcredit model. Proclaiming that it would rapidly bring new jobs, incomes, empowerment and dignity to the poorest black communities and townships, expectations of rapid progress ran high.

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How you can use kickstarter to help. And a alternative website.

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I got a knock-back letter from an incubator the other day. Their reason: "concerns about your ability to out-execute the incumbent." They are talking, of course, about Kickstarter, the massively-successful website who introduced most people to the idea of crowdfunding. This is a common confusion but completely misplaced in our opinion. I decided to tackle the issue head-on with a post on the StartSomeGood blog, which I've re-posted below. I'd love your thoughts on whether this explanation resonates with you and how we can best express our unique value and purpose. The importance of diversity

We all talk about abundance vs scarcity, knowing logically that there is an abundance of resources to accomplish whatever anyone might want to do in this world, and yet many (most?) people have traditionally struggled to unlock the support they need to pursue their dreams.

So what would it take for all worthy endeavors to get the support they need?

In the real world you would need a range of venues available for different art forms and events just as you find in most cities - some generalist, hosting everything from basketball to ice dancing to concerts, others art form-specific but presenting a variety of acts and genres while other venues specialize in particular genres or performance forms. There are venues for speeches and workshops, parties and performances, for making things together or sitting back and watching. The vitality of a cities culture relies on this diversity of opportunities.

And this is precisely how the crowdfunding landscape is also playing out. For individuals with a passion for anything at all, there is IndieGoGo. For US-based artists and creative entrepreneurs with a product, there is Kickstarter while in Australia there is Pozible and in France Ulule. For journalists there is Spot.us and for app developers there is AppBackr.

And for social entrepreneurs and changemakers focused on making the world a better place, there is StartSomeGood.
Why we are not competing with Kickstarter
It is specifically in relation to Kickstarter that most confusion on this point arises.

Here at StartSomeGood we have heard these questions numerous times:

How are you different to Kickstarter?

Aren't you just a niche Kickstarter?

Why would people choose you instead of Kickstarter?

How do you intend to compete with Kickstarter?

The confusion here is related to Kickstarter's huge mindshare, being the way many people found out about crowdfunding, but also largely on us. It is our job to explain how what we're doing fits into the current fundraising landscape and the ways in which we are distinctive even as we work towards a similar vision. This post is an attempt to do that.

This belief that we are not competing with Kickstarter is both a philosophical position but also a practical observation of the different markets we serve. The confusion arises here I believe because with all the media attention to Kickstarter people only casually connected to the space often think of them as an all-purpose crowdfunding platform. This leads some to wonder how we will thrive with our (seemingly) more-niche platform focused on social change projects.

But Kickstarter is not an all-purpose platform, their focus is very clear: creative projects only. They are strict in maintaining their criteria (and explicitly prohibit "charity projects") and have a particular style of project they prefer - one with a clear, productized outcome which can be shared or consumed. So Kickstarter are a niche platform, just as we are, but in both cases our respective niche's are enormous. To be sure, there are some situations where there is overlap, such as in the instance of a film about a social issue, a political app or a food justice project. But the vast majority of the ventures we exist to serve simply cannot participate on Kickstarter's platform due to either not being a creative product or being based outside the United States.

Rather than write another 1,000 words on this, here's a little Venn diagram we hope will succinctly illustrate the point:

So the concept that people need to "choose us over Kickstarter" is accurate only in a few specific instances; for most social impact ventures Kickstarter is not actually an available choice.

Kickstarter has given rise to countless new films, gadgets and art projects; StartSomeGood to brand new social change organizations. Kickstarter has empowered video game makers, iPhone gadgeteers and t-shirt designers; StartSomeGood has empowered changemakers of all ages and from many countries to pursue their dreams. Rather than choosing one platform over the other, in most cases it's clear from the start which site is the best fit for which project, with our shared purpose of providing an opportunity to rally supporters around your vision being the common denominator.

Given how much there is that needs doing in the world and the people looking for tools to help them make it happen we believe there is a significant business opportunity to do for the social sector what Kickstarter have done for the creative sector. But by far more importantly, there is a huge opportunity, indeed, a need, to empower and inspire thousands of changemakers to create the future they want for their communities.
Allies, not competitors
This opportunity speaks to a bigger and more important philosophical point. We believe that the world is abundant with possibilities: world-changing ideas and changemakers ready to make them happen. We exist to help those changemakers go from idea to action and impact. We have always been enormously inspired by the impact Kickstarter have had in the creative industries. We aim to democratize the social sector, creating opportunities for new types of projects, diverse organizational forms and a new generation of changemakers, just as Kickstarter is democratizing cultural consumption and the creative industries.

We are in fact huge fans of Kickstarter. I myself have supported 36 projects on Kickstarter, which puts me in the top 1% of project backers, given that 84% of Kickstarter members have given to just a single project.

The sectors we focus on are the two most in need of disruption, as funding decisions in both the creative and social change sectors have traditionally been made by small groups far removed from those who most benefit from the work produced. Now social and creative entrepreneurs can go around these traditional decision-makers and turn directly to their communities for the support they need.

We are proud to be part of this movement to break down barriers and provide the tools to help people do epic things. Rather than competing StartSomeGood and Kickstarter are creating the same future: one that is more democratic, open, participatory and exciting.
In Summary, How StartSomeGood is Different from Kickstarter:

They are for creative projects while we are for social impact projects;

They require a US bank account to launch a campaign while we accept projects from 110 countries (anywhere you can set up a paypal account);

They use an all-or-nothing model and we use a Tipping Point model;

Kickstarter was founded by creatives for creative entrepreneurs, StartSomeGood was founded by changemakers for social entrepreneurs.

If you are still unsure please get in touch and let's talk about which platform might be right for you.
So, did that clear things up?

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Kickstarter for social change - Out There and Back Again - Tom Dawkins

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I got a knock-back letter from an incubator the other day. Their reason: "concerns about your ability to out-execute the incumbent." They are talking, of course, about Kickstarter, the massively-successful website who introduced most people to the idea of crowdfunding. This is a common confusion but completely misplaced in our opinion.

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It's not easy to get a successful kickstarter

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This statistic shows the share of successfully funded projects on Kickstarter. As of November 10, 2020, the success rate of fully funding a project on the crowdfunding website was 38.21 percent. Overall, almost 4.9 billion U.S. dollars have gone into successfully launched projects.
Kickstarter - additional information
Although the concept of crowdfunding is not new per se, having been previously used in history, the rise of the internet has allowed for unprecedented global outreach when pursuing crowd-supported financing. As of 2017, there are hundreds of platforms that allow individuals or companies to reach out to their peers, some of them allowing for a large range of purposes and others catering to highly specialized niches, such as charity, scientific experiments, social impact, gaming, real estate or startups. The three most popular platforms are currently Kickstarter, GoFundMe and Indiegogo.

Kickstarter is an American-based crowdfunding platform which was created in 2009 and has reportedly received pledges worth more than 4.5 billion U.S. dollars.

The company focuses on creative projects and functions on a reward-based system, where backers of a project are promised a little something in return for their financial contribution, such as personalized merchandise, invitations to events, public acknowledgement or updates regarding the project's development. Kickstarter also applies one of two types of reward-base crowdfunding, namely 'All-or-Nothing' support, where project initiators set a funding goal and receive the donations only if the goal is reached, as opposed to 'Keep-it-All,' the funding model used by other platforms, where the money raised is kept regardless of whether or not it meets the funding goal.

As of July 2019, the most popular category of projects featured on Kickstarter is games, with some 1.1 billion U.S. dollars pledged. Design projects were the next most funded, followed by technology, film & video, and music. One of the most funded games so far is Exploding Kittens, a card game designed by Elan Lee, Shane Small and comic creator Matthew Inman, a.k.a. The Oatmeal. Their initial funding goal was only 10 thousand U.S. dollars, which was reached within eight minutes. Exploding Kittens received over 8.7 million U.S. dollars in pledges from more than 200 thousand backers in less than a month, making it one of the most successful Kickstarter campaigns of all time.

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Kickstarter: project funding success rate 2020 | Statista

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This statistic shows the share of successfully funded projects on Kickstarter. As of November 10, 2020, the success rate of fully funding a project on the crowdfunding website was 38.21 percent. Overall, almost 4.9 billion U.S. dollars have gone into successfully launched projects.

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Kickstarter is not an easy place to become successful infact only 38.21 percent of projects are successfull and most of does project fun creative projects and not life saving project. And kivkstarter is like social media, because unless you do somthing that will make a major breakthrew in the media your just gonna be un known to regular old people just wanting to fund people's creative dreams.

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website three and four

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Micro crediting is important as it provides money for a savings account, lines of credit and access to relatively cheap loans. Or else, if they wanted to get traditional bank loans, they would first have to get a bank account, then would get the loan, and repay it at an insanely high interest, so if their business was unsuccessful, they would be plunged deeper into poverty. If they didn't want to take a bank loan, they would have to request for amounts of money from their kith and kin.

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Microfinance-also called microcredit-is a way to provide small business owners and entrepreneurs access to capital. Often these small and individual business don't have access to traditional financial resources from major institutions. This means it is harder to access loans, insurance, and investments that will help grow their business.

Essentially, microfinance is providing loans, credit, access to savings accounts -even insurance policies and money transfers--to the small business owner and entrepreneur. There are many such enterprises in the developing world.

How Microfinancing Works

Microfinance, pioneered by the Nobel-Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, helps the financially marginalized by providing them with the necessary capital to start a business and work toward financial independence.﻿﻿ These loans are significant because they are given even though the borrower has no collateral. However, the interest rates for these microloans are often very high due to the risk of default.﻿﻿

The term microfinance encompasses microloans, micro-savings, and microinsurance. Microfinance institutions provide small loans and other resources to business owners and entrepreneurs to help them get their businesses off the ground. Many of the recipients are in developing countries, and could otherwise not obtain a traditional loan.﻿﻿

Micro-savings accounts are also under the microfinance umbrella. They allow entrepreneurs to have a savings account with no minimum balance.﻿﻿ And microinsurance provides these borrowers with insurance, at a lower rate, and with lesser premiums.﻿﻿

Financial Literacy

Sometimes, those who receive microloans are required to take training courses. These courses include book-keeping, cash flow management, and other relevant skills.﻿﻿

Access to cell phones and wireless internet around the world has also lent itself to the prevalence of microfinance since potential borrowers can use their cell phones as banking channels.

Why Is It Important?

Microfinance is important because it provides resources and access to capital to the financially underserved, such as those who are unable to get checking accounts, lines of credit, or loans from traditional banks.

Without microfinance, these groups may have to resort to using loans or payday advances with extremely high-interest rates or even borrow money from family and friends. Microfinance helps them invest in their businesses, and as a result, invest in themselves.

Who Benefits from Microfinancing?

While microfinance can certainly benefit those stateside, it can also serve as an important resource for those in the developing world. For example, cell phones are being used as a way to bring financial services such as microlending to those living in Kenya.﻿﻿

It's also made headway in the United States, where burgeoning entrepreneurs with no collateral are able to take out loans of less than $50,000 to jump-start their business ventures.﻿﻿

Microfinance can also help women break the cycle of poverty. Often, these loans can be as small as $60. For example, a young single mother from Paraguay took this small investment of $60 to start an empanada and snack stand. She continued building her business, repaying this loan and taking out larger loans to buy a building for her stand, complete with a refrigerator and attached home for her family.﻿﻿ This is microfinance at its best.

In fact, women are major microfinance borrowers, making up 80% of loans in 2018, according to the 2019 Microfinance Barometer. Around 65% of total borrowers live in rural areas, which means that a large number of female microfinance borrowers live in rural areas with limited resources.

The microfinance industry is also growing rapidly. In 2018, there were 139.9 million microfinance borrowers, for a total of $124 billion in loans. India accounted for most of these borrows, followed by Bangladesh, and Vietnam.﻿﻿

Does It Actually Work?

While some have lauded microfinance as a way to end the cycle of poverty, decrease unemployment, increase earning power, and aid the financially marginalized, some experts say that it may not work as well as it should, even going so far as to say it's lost its mission.

Others argue that microfinance simply makes poverty worse since many borrowers use microloans to pay for basic necessities, or their businesses fail, which only plunges them further into debt.

For example, in South Africa, 94% of all microfinance loans are used for consumption, meaning, the funds are used to pay for basic necessities. This means borrowers aren't generating new income with the initial loan, which means they have to take out another loan to pay off that loan, and so forth and so forth. This translates into a lot more debt.﻿﻿

However, other experts say that microfinance can serve as a valuable tool for the financially underserved when used properly. They also cite the industry's high repayment rate as proof of its effectiveness.

Either way, microfinance is an important topic in the financial realm, and if done correctly, could be a powerful tool for many.

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Microfinance-also called microcredit-is a way to provide small business owners and entrepreneurs access to capital. Often these small and individual business don't have access to traditional financial resources from major institutions. This means it is harder to access loans, insurance, and investments that will help grow their business.