Leslie Forman
Leslie is Wokai's Online Social Media Director. She lives in San Francisco.
Today is Blog Action Day, an event for which bloggers worldwide are writing about a single topic: poverty. All over the Internet, I've seen articles, videos, and widgets and the energy is pretty incredible.
Microfinance is one of the most effective mechanisms for alleviating poverty worldwide. I am so excited to be part of the movement to expand the reach and impact of microfinance in China. I'd like to share this excellent story from Kiva Fellow Kieran Ball describing his unwitting introduction to the need for microfinance.
In 2006 I was fortunate enough to be travelling in China with my mum (that’s British for “mom” to any readers from the States). We had been there for a couple of weeks but were beginning to tire of the constant pollution in the cities, so we decided to head for the countryside on a public bus. Upon arriving in yet another small town, we realised the only way we were going to see the countryside was to flag down a rickshaw, essentially a three-wheeled pedal bike with a double seat at the back for passengers....
Curious to understand how, or indeed why, he had chosen to effectively take it upon himself to replace the internal combustion engine, my mother peppered him with questions. By the top of the hill we understood that he hired the rickshaw from a guy in the town for 200 Yuan ($25) per month, and that in the summer months this usually generated between 400 and 600 Yuan per month of revenue, but only 300 to 400 Yuan per month in the off-season. Most of his profits were sent home to support his family, leaving him just enough to live on. With a maximum profit margin of $50 per month, this didn’t amount to much.
By the bottom of the next hill we had discovered that to buy his own rickshaw would cost 1000 Yuan, around $150. My mum and I sat in silence, except for the sound of her translating to me, shocked at the idea that such a relatively small amount of money to us, would transform this young man’s life from one of eternally scraping-by to potentially doubling his monthly profits.
Click here to read his complete post. Thank you Kieran Ball for sharing this incredible story. Thank you Muhammad Yunus for inventing microfinance and sharing it with the world. Thank you Courtney and Casey and the rest of the Wokai team for expanding the potential for microfinance to alleviate poverty in China. Go Wokai!
Thank you for putting a story to microfinancing along with the figures. It's amazing to think what just a little money can do to jumpstart an individual towards financial independence and microfinancing, as we are beginning to discover, can really transform how we understand economics. We hear "What can one person do?" and the answer to that is, one person can transform a whole extended family from poverty to wealth.
Thank you so much for your support of blog action day!
Posted by: Cynthia Wunsch | October 15, 2008 at 11:23 PM