The SocialFinance.ca weekly round up is back! SocialFinance.ca produces a round up featuring social finance related news, insights, job openings, and events. We source the content for these round ups from Twitter, an RSS reader, and directly from our community of social finance practitioners. Below is our round up for the weeks of January 16 and January 24.
Two entrepreneurs. Two successful businesses. Both were unable to access financing from mainstream financial institutions. Both are driven entrepreneurs with solid business plans to support their growth. Both have experienced economic and social benefits, and were empowered through capital. The difference was the setting: Ouattara is a client of a microfinance organization based in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso and Ryan is part of a new targeted domestic microfinance project in Toronto, Canada.
On April 8, 2011, MaRS hosted nine practitioners of social finance from across the spectrum to speak about the best (and worst) practices in social finance. Alex Kjorven was the Development Manager at the ACCESS Community Capital Fund at the time of this event and spoke about practices to avoid when practicing microfinance in Canada. How do you ensure that your staff are properly trained to deal with clients? How do you properly evaluate potential loan recipients? "If we try too hard to make it perfect, we'll actually end up screening out the very people we are trying to help."
In a rural farming community outside of Cuenca, Ecuador, a widowed mother of four named María Nieves has built a thriving business raising and selling pigs and cuys (guinea pigs, an Ecuadorian delicacy).
Maria cites a microfinance organization named Fundación Espoir as a critical factor in her success—but not just because it has given her access to small loans to fund her business. Espoir has also provided her with low-cost health care and preventive health education, which has empowered her to take better care of her and her children’s health. “My children get sick less,” she says.
The debate over microfinance is as old as the idea itself. Once praised as the golden solution to poverty, it now faces the criticisms and condemnation that often follow success and misuse. Bree Gardner interviews Alex Counts and Michele Fugiele Gartner to learn more.
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Your Guide helps social entrepreneurs learn how to attract financing for their social ventures.
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Your Guide to Social Finance
SocialFinance.ca hosts an online guide that helps social entrepreneurs learn how to attract financing for their social ventures.
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