Accounting and Program Audit Team
Log # 6
By Chi Le
Inspired by the topic of microfinance, which is what GLOBE
focuses on; I have been searching about how microfinance works in
my country, Vietnam. From the information that I found,
microfinance is not very popular in Vietnam because of a few major
reasons. There are many restrictions on microfinance in Vietnam.
This is surprising since the mission of microfinance is to fight
the battle of poverty and inequality. First, microfinance
organizations in Vietnam have a much smaller scale than other
countries in the world. Second, the government has strictly
regulated the development of microloans. As a result, small-scale
organizations are not allowed to work legally, give out loans to
people and the money used for lending must be higher than a certain
amount. Clearly, the government tends to constrain the
establishment of unreliable organizations but this, on the other
hand, is a barrier of the development of microfinance.
It is said that many organizations from abroad see Vietnam as a
target to expand microfinance. However, by the difficulties they
have to face when penetrating this country continues to make this a
problem. Besides, it is understood that the mission of microfinance
is to help the poor and also to get the loans repaid so that the
organizations will be able to succeed and develop. Otherwise, the
small-scale limits their ability to stand by themselves and this is
the reason why some of them cannot last for a long time.
Microfinance has not been really developed in the country of
Vietnam due to the government restrictions. With that being said,
GLOBE is able to get around these government restrictions because
our program works with the Daughters of Charity. The Daughters of
Charity are our field agents who help to find entrepreneurs who
need loans and cannot get them from the bank. Since GLOBE does not
have to worry about the government restrictions, which makes our
three loans in Vietnam very successful and beneficial to our
borrowers. Recently the government has been more open and created
more favorable conditions for microfinance to grow after realizing
its value and potential.
Finance and Risk Assessment Team
Log # 6
By Danai Shirihuru
As social businesses have increased in popularity, and attracted
a lot of positivity with institutions such as Muhammad Yunus’
Grameen Bank, Social businesses have also attracted a lot of
negative attention. There have been allegations of microfinance
institutions charging interest rates north of 80%, taking advantage
of those living in poverty and fabricated default rates. Due to my
experiences in GLOBE however I believe the good by far outweighs
the bad.
This week our lecture began with a quote by Bill Drayton, CEO,
chair and founder of Ashoka, “Social entrepreneurs are not content
just to give a fish or teach how to fish. They will not rest until
they have revolutionized the fishing industry."
Throughout the semester there have been multiple mentions of the
negativity surrounding social businesses, but this quote sums up
the reasons I believe in the purpose of GLOBE. Reading this quote
and being a manager of a social business, I am proud to know that I
am an enabler of revolution. Social businesses such as GLOBE are
not simply a way to get by for the day, or for the year, it is a
pioneering and innovative program setting up to ease the tension on
poverty.
While there have been many documented cons to micro financing, the
benefits of micro finance institutions definitely outweigh the
costs, especially for a micro finance institution such as GLOBE.
The reach of GLOBE is on a small scale; however the effects are
long term and positive. As a manager on the Finance and Risk
Assessment team, one of the things that motivates me to support an
applicant, along many other things of course is the number of
children our borrowers have. Our most recent loan applicant
Elizabeth is borrowing USD583, and is supporting her eight
children. The amount she is borrowing may seem very little in
America, but with this money she is able to educate her eight
children, and support them over a period of 8 months and hopefully
break the cycle of poverty.
Along with helping entrepreneurs, being a manager of GLOBE, we are
able to gain an education. We are also able to spread awareness to
other students who may not necessarily have considered the idea of
going into social business due to the negativity surrounding social
businesses.
Marketing and Fundraising Team
Log # 6
By Stephanie Pereira Lima
Last week, the Marketing and Fundraising Team was assigned to
read Chapter 8, entitled Broadening the Marketplace, in “Creating a
World without Poverty” by Dr. Yunnus. The closing section of this
chapter consists of Muhammad Yunus’ predictions for the future of
social business as a whole. He proposes that more institutions will
create appropriate systems to support the infrastructure of social
businesses. I most certainly agree with this, however, he continues
to propose a somewhat radical idea, in my opinion. In the emergence
of social businesses he puts forth a plan in creating a “social”
stock market. Consequently, new banks (or rather social banks) to
support such businesses will be established as well as a social DOW
index. Yunus states that it will function in the exact fashion of
current global stock markets: investors buy and sell shares of a
business. However, in the social stock market, long-term value of
each share is measured by the overall benefits or good
consequences.
Although I am rather optimistic, this idea is quite a stretch. I
would not go as far as to say that it is completely impossible but
it will take some time to be fully in effect. Perhaps if a highly
respected intergovernmental agency such as the United Nations or
World Bank went about creating such a system then it would,
arguably, catch on. I fully agree with Muhammad Yunus in that the
younger generations would be the target market, especially in the
early stages of its creation. Furthermore, this would be an
extremely time-consuming investment. In our current world, as long
as monetary profit is prioritized, decentralizing from such a goal
into one based upon social development seems far-fetched. To create
a globally overreaching stock market, the capitalistic mindset
should be overturned within developing communities. As put by
Yunnus, we must seek “life rich in meaning beyond profit.”
Regarding our group work, we are making progress in reaching our
goals. I feel that with each event we are periodically escalating
our visibility on campus, which goes beyond fundraising. However I
am somewhat concerned about our number one goal: raising $2,500
dollars. Nevertheless, I am most excited for our Friends of GLOBE
Mixer as I see attendance for that event to be extremely high. This
is going to be a great opportunity to bring the GLOBE family
together, friends of friends, and families of friends for such a
great cause.
Technology and Communications Team
Log # 6
By Boryana Yordanova
It has been such a successful week for GLOBE! Our second Bake
Sale took place on Thursday in Marillac, where with the support of
St. John’s students, professors and staff, we were able to raise
$301.24. Earlier that day the IT team met with Asia Hauter, who is
the Communication Manager for Tobin College of Business and is in
charge of maintaining GLOBE’s website. Our team had previously
discussed some ideas about improving the website and we were very
happy to share them with Asia. We decided to create a timeline,
which would represent the history of GLOBE in a nutshell, starting
from the beginning and showing all big events and successes of the
program such as the first approved loan, Muhammad Yunus’ visit to
St. John’s University, Bake Sales, and big events. The idea is to
make the website more visionary and interesting for the audience.
In addition, we will create E-boards for the upcoming events that
will be showed on the screens in Marillac and DAC, which will help
us better promote GLOBE on campus. Another thing the IT team came
up with is to post the team’s objectives on the website under the
name of the particular team, providing additional information about
what the tasks of the teams are. We will update all pictures on the
website and replace them with newer ones. Since we want to make the
website more visionary, we will add pictures of each promotional
item so that people can actually see the items and choose whichever
they like. It will make the page more appealing and hopefully
attract more people. And eventually raise more money from
donations. Meanwhile, the IT team has been posting inspiration
quotes, articles and videos on all of GLOBE social media platforms.
I could not help but notice the increase in likes and activity on
the Facebook page. People like and share the inspirational quotes
because they can easily relate to them and they find it to be a
great way to start your day. I hope that they also watch the videos
and articles about microfinance because there are some very moving
stories that are worth seeing. I often think about this complicated
world that we live in and it is amazing how the power of social
businesses can really change the world we live in today and make it
a better place. All we need to do is spread the word, raise
awareness, and help those in need. It is a simple solution to this
complicated problem.
Another exciting experience for GLOBE was today’s class when
students from Florida’s Eckerd College came to visit and learn more
about the program. Dr. Brenton came in as a guest speaker to talk
about Geographic Informational Systems and Poverty Mapping. What is
poverty mapping? It can be defined as a powerful tool that provides
detailed description of the distribution of poverty and inequality
within a country, village, community or neighborhood. An advantage
of poverty mapping is that it can be used when trying to identify
poor areas and finding the causes that led to deficiency of
resources in these areas. However, some may ask how accurate is the
data used for poverty mapping or are those people that need the
most help, living in very poor, remote areas are even included in
the data? Unfortunately they are hard to reach due to their
isolated way of life but taking a few samples of the population can
still be helpful when targeting poor areas. Poverty mapping is not
only useful for policy makers when designing ways of alleviating
poverty but it is also a great way to visionary show reality on a
map. Yes, people like statistics and other credible source of
information but they cannot realize how drastic the issue of
poverty is in certain countries just by reading a simple statistic.
That is when the visual picture comes in hand to express the
seriousness of the problem. I even noticed the reaction of students
in the class today after seeing some of the maps shown by Dr.
Brenton. Images can be very powerful and may have greater impact
than words, thus the IT team has decided to incorporate Poverty
Mapping in our final presentation. We hope to influence our
audience, the same way we were moved by the images.