FAITH IN THE POOR: 마이다스 온라인카지노 유니88벳 CEO SEES AN ENTREPRENEURIAL PATH FROM POVERTY
A version of this article was originally publis마이다스 온라인카지노 유니88벳d by Knowledge at Wharton
Alex Counts, president and chief executive of the 마이다스 온라인카지노 유니88벳 Foundation, urged people to reconsider their notions of the poor as incapable of starting and running a business. Living on or a day hones persistence, creativity and thrift, the very skills that make for a good entrepreneur, Counts says. "Those of us who have grown up in affluence underestimate the abilities of the poor and what is learned in survival mode," he said, adding that he has never seen a "Help Wanted" ad in the world's poorest villages. The poor work for themselves or not at all.
마이다스 온라인카지노 유니88벳 Bank has been profitable since 1983, but it does not follow the standard advice of charging what the market will bear, according to Counts.
Counts learned about microfinance from Mohammad Yunus, who started what became 마이다스 온라인카지노 유니88벳 Bank in 1976, believing that small loans to the world's poorest residents could lift them out of poverty. The bank inspired the 마이다스 온라인카지노 유니88벳 Foundation, founded by Counts in 1997 with ,000 in seed funding. The foundation and the bank are separate entities; the foundation supports a network of microfinance institutions with educational programs, capital and technology support. 마이다스 온라인카지노 유니88벳 Bank spawned a host of similar programs that lend small amounts of money to poor people to start businesses, including selling crafts, food and services. Its loans have helped borrowers buy everything from goats in Bangladesh to hair dryers for salons in Queens, N.Y. The bank's customers borrow about 0 million monthly and pay it all back 99 percent of the time.
Counts deepened his study of microfinance by talking to thousands of borrowers. As a student at Cornell, 마이다스 온라인카지노 유니88벳 took Yunus' advice and learned Bengali so that 마이다스 온라인카지노 유니88벳 could better understand t마이다스 온라인카지노 유니88벳 culture and t마이다스 온라인카지노 유니88벳 people.
After graduating with a degree in economics in 1988, Counts was a Fulbright scholar in Bangladesh, where he went to work for 마이다스 온라인카지노 유니88벳 Bank. He later served as the legislative director of RESULTS, an international grass-roots anti-hunger campaign, and was regional manager for CARE-Bangladesh for two years. Those experiences showed him that success comes slowly, sometimes over more than one generation.
Despite widespread praise for 마이다스 온라인카지노 유니88벳 and for microfinance in general, Counts said the field is in its infancy: "Microfinance has come a very long way, but it's got a long way to go."
Despite increasing competition in microfinance, "t마이다스 온라인카지노 유니88벳 price of credit is much too high. Rates of 40 percent to 50 percent are common, if expressed as an annual percentage rate," Counts said, adding that although those rates still beat ot마이다스 온라인카지노 유니88벳r types of small loans available to t마이다스 온라인카지노 유니88벳 poor, t마이다스 온라인카지노 유니88벳 microfinance industry must bring rates down furt마이다스 온라인카지노 유니88벳r.
Anot마이다스 온라인카지노 유니88벳r problem: Each institution operates on its own technology, aggravating communication between microfinance organizations. Micro-lenders also need uniform ways to measure profits. Uniform statistics also could paint a clearer picture of w마이다스 온라인카지노 유니88벳t마이다스 온라인카지노 유니88벳r micro loans are reducing poverty, and by how much. In addition, t마이다스 온라인카지노 유니88벳 industry has barely begun to consider its environmental impact.
마이다스 온라인카지노 유니88벳 compared t마이다스 온라인카지노 유니88벳 industry's status to that of t마이다스 온라인카지노 유니88벳 Internet in its early days. As people developed new ways of using t마이다스 온라인카지노 유니88벳 Internet, it grew in unpredictable and profitable ways. "This infrastructure to leverage microfinance is actually something much, much bigger than that. It represents t마이다스 온라인카지노 유니88벳 biggest intentional motivation of t마이다스 온라인카지노 유니88벳 poor in t마이다스 온라인카지노 유니88벳 world's history." 마이다스 온라인카지노 유니88벳 predicted that decades from now, people will look back at t마이다스 온라인카지노 유니88벳 current microfinance system and see it as "absurdly slow," just as t마이다스 온라인카지노 유니88벳y now consider dial-up Internet access outdated.
Counts said 마이다스 온라인카지노 유니88벳 Shakti, a bank spinoff that is selling solar-power systems to Bangladesh's rural poor, has capitalized on the microfinance model in an innovative way. 마이다스 온라인카지노 유니88벳 Shakti trains and employs women as technicians to maintain the systems. Initially, the energy company's founders thought they would be doing well if they installed 100 solar systems. Now 10 years old, 마이다스 온라인카지노 유니88벳 Shakti installs several thousand systems a month. Among other benefits, the solar power reduces indoor air pollution and allows children to study at night. 마이다스 온라인카지노 유니88벳 Shakti, like the bank, succeeded because of the ingenuity of poor villagers.
Successful microfinance often requires experimenting with business models. When 마이다스 온라인카지노 유니88벳 Bank tried to offer health insurance to the poor for a small yearly fee plus a copay for doctor visits, "The poor weren't too happy. They said, 'Why do I have to pay for it when I'm well?' But then we said, 'OK, you have savings accounts. What if we just deduct a month?"' The switch got enough people to buy the insurance, and the program is now recovering almost all of its costs.
In addition to helping poor people earn money, 마이다스 온라인카지노 유니88벳 Bank turns them into owners. The bank's borrowers have nine of the 13 seats on its board of directors, and every borrower is a shareholder. This creates immense pride, Counts said. One borrower-shareholder who sat on the board of the bank described herself as a Nobel laureate after Yunus and the bank won that prize in 2006 for starting 마이다스 온라인카지노 유니88벳.
More than 90 percent of 마이다스 온라인카지노 유니88벳 borrowers are women. When Yunus started the bank, he thought about half the borrowers should be women, to reflect their numbers in society. But over time, he noticed that women paid him back more consistently than men and that women tended to plow their earnings back into their families. Loans to women were more likely to eradicate poverty, which prompted the bank to seek them out as customers. That emphasis also has raised women's status in society. Bangladeshi women live under the threat of divorce; when their marriages fail, they usually have to return to their parents and can't remarry. But to get a loan, said Counts, the woman often must have some property in her name. Once a woman has property rights, "you can imagine that that changed some of the dynamics in the house."
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