Watch this 90 second video from Unitus (my employer!) President and CEO Geoff Davis and Board Chair Mike Murray to learn how your donation or holiday gift in the name of a friend or family member will help alleviate poverty.

Unitus helps alleviate global poverty by dramatically increasing access to microfinance. This holiday season, give the gift of opportunity to poor women and men worldwide with your generous support.

Many of you may have already heard, but I returned to work today! I accepted an offer from Unitus to be VP Marketing and Communications! I have a lot to learn about the microfinance industry, but from what I’ve seen of the Unitus team and what they’ve accomplished to date, I’m excited to jump in, start learning, and help them accomplish even more great things.

So, you’ll probably start to see some more microfinance-oriented blog entries — not sure if that means I should start up a fresh/new blog or not, but I don’t think I will — will try to continue to keep this for overall life experiences.

For my friends who ask “What does Unitus do”, here goes:

• Unitus is a microfinance accelerator — for those unfamiliar with the term microfinance, you can think of it as ‘banking services for the poor’
• That is, we work to identify the highest-potential microfinance institutions around the world, and then if our interests are aligned, we partner with them and invest capital and capacity-building consulting to help them achieve exponential growth
• So, we serve a function very similar to venture capital firms or top-tier business schools — we try to find the best, and then make them even better

Please check out the Unitus website to learn more, and please send ideas — one of my first tasks is to do some site/search-engine optimization work — will take a few weeks for changes (meta data, dmoz categorization, etc) to take effect and populate through the web 🙂

I have continued to be interested in microfinance since my first meeting with folks at Unitus — so much, in fact, that I decided to attend their Partner Expedition to Mexico to visit their partner, Pro Mujer Mexico.

On April 20, I flew to Houston and then on to Mexico City. My first impression of Mexico City, from the air, was how massive it was — I later learned that its population of 18 million is much larger than New York City!

I met the main group in the airport and we then hopped on our bus for the 1-2 hour drive in heavy traffic to Tula (an area north of Mexico City) — the other travelers were several Unitus employees and 6-8 others like me who were interested in learning more about what Unitus does, and how microfinance impacts poor borrowers. We arrived at our hotel in Tula, the Hotel Real Del Bosque, which was quite nice, and then crashed. The next day, we went into Tula and visited the main Pro Mujer Mexico office — the center’s director, Armando Laborde, introduced us to his staff, showed us a map of their different loan offices, and talked of their growth plans — it was really compelling to see how hard they were all working, and also how much they truly seemed to appreciate the relationship they have with the Unitus team.

I’ll leave out a lot of detail, but the remainder of the day and the following day were amazing — we were able to sit in on a loan repayment meeting, where women came to make their bi-weekly loan payments (remember that many of the loans start at levels as low as $100, and then have short 6-month repayments; when they repay their loan, they know that they’re automatically eligible for a follow-on loan), contribute their required savings, and then watched their training class (the topic on this day was ‘Communication’).

After that, we went out to the markets to visit Pro Mujer borrowers at their businesses — we met with shopkeepers selling produce, dresses, and more, and also visited a home where a woman used her loan to purchase cooking materials and supplies to make cheese, and then sell it door-to-door to friends — she was quite proud of her operation… she showed us how she mixed all the ingredients and then shared some of her finished product… the cheese was delicious, and the proceeds have allowed her to support her family of 4 children and a husband who has been laid off for the last 6 months — very impressive.

We also got some touristing activities in… got to visit the pyramids… always amazing to see these tremendous feats of determination!

In the end, the personal introduction to microfinance was very powerful — was inspirational to see the Pro Mujer Mexico staff, especially, as these people don’t need to be doing this… management is staffed by professionals who could easily find higher-paying work in Mexico City; however, they believe in what they’re doing is making a difference, and honestly, I agree with them.

If you’d like to hear more about the trip, contact me!

I spoke with an ex-amazon person today who is now working at a non-profit called Unitus — Unitus acts as a sort of venture capital firm that invests in microfinance institutions in third world countries. All I can say is that it is incredibly inspiring to think about the impact organizations like this have on the world.

Some scary statistics:
– 6 Billion people on our lovely planet
– 3 Billion (yes, half) live on less than $2 per day (yes, $2… less than the cost of a latte)
– 1.3 Billion have no access to clean water
– 3 Billion have no access to sanitation
– 2 Billion have no access to electricity
– Literacy Rate – 97% in US, 30% in Poor countries
– The USA gives a smaller % of our GDP than any other developed country

What microfinance is, in a nutshell, is lending of small amounts of money (less than $300) to individuals to allow them to invest the money to improve their quality of life. The repayment rates on these loans averages >95%, which is nothing short of amazing.

It was an inspiring conversation.

If you want to learn more, please visit Unitus, or email me.

I’ve been investigating some socially-inspired career alternatives and my friend Barbara recommended that I attend Seattle’s 2005 Fast Company Social Capitalist Awards ceremony. It was held at the University of Washington (I am always surprised by how beautiful their campus is) and awards were presented to:

– Grameen Technology Center – The Center’s director, Peter Bladin, talked about their focus — they are an initiative of Grameen Foundation USA, whose mission is to empower the world’s poorest people to lift themselves out of poverty with dignity through access to financial services and to information. Was a great reminder about the power of microfinance. Another attendee reminded me of another local microfinance organization, Unitus.

– PATH – Their President, Chris Elias, talked about their focus — PATH is an international, nonprofit organization that creates sustainable, culturally relevant solutions that enable communities worldwide to break longstanding cycles of poor health. By collaborating with diverse public- and private-sector partners, PATH helps provide appropriate health technologies and vital strategies that change the way people think and act.

– Social Venture Partners – Tom Donlea, Director, talked about their focus — SVP seeks to develop philanthropy and volunteerism to achieve positive social change in the Puget Sound region. Using the venture capital approach as a model, SVP is committed to giving time, money and expertise to create partnerships with not-for-profit organizations. SVP is a dual mission organization, seeking to be both an engaged grantmaker as well as a catalyst for smart giving.