Seed Money For New Business

johne said:

I seem to remember reading somewhere about an International organization that gave "seed" money ( I think only to women) to people to start a business in the hopes of pulling them out of poverty. As I recall it was being done in some African countries. Anyone have any knowledge of this organization and if so is it being done in the DR?

JOHN

Click to expand...

John, are you talking about the microcredit model originated by the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, that lent out to women to start their own businesses? Was a big success, and has been duplicated in places like Mali. I believe that the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the World Bank family (can't remember if was International Finance Corp. or Intl. Development Assn.) were helping set such microcredit schemes up in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), but it's been awhile since I last read about it (I got interested because the IDB was talking about using this to get community based recycling co-ops going using such schemes)....

I have in my files a link to the original, in case you're interested:
http://www.grameen-info.org/

Hope this helps. I'll try to see if I can locate the file I had on microcredit schemes in LAC...

Best Regards,
Keith

John, I just did some quick surfing, and found a ton of stuff on this subject relating to Latin America and the Caribbean. One example, this IDB report on best pratices in the region: http://www.iadb.org/sds/doc/319014villagebanking.pdf

Anyhoo, just plug in "microfinance", "microcredit" or "village banking" and "Latin America" or "Caribbean" in Google, and you'll find quite a bit.

Evidently 2005 has been designated the Year of Microcredit, and there will be a regional conference for LAC on the subject held in Santiago, Chile in March.

Hope some of this proves useful.

Best Regards,
Keith

Accion

Also check out Accion International, a Boston based organization that makes micro-loans in the Caribbean and Latin America. They've been around for about 20 years. It looks as though they're active in Haiti, but may not be in DR at the moment

Regards,
Ben