Accounting and Program Audit Team
Log # 4
By Hua Yong Jack Chen
As it approached Spring Break, I was glad to have some rest.
However, as I was watching NY1, something occurred to me. The news
channel always had a segment called New Yorker of the Week, and it
talks about how people in this city made a difference in their
communities. The New Yorker of the Week was a 16-year-old high
school student who was a sneaker addict. However, what makes him
unique is that he decided to create a charitable organization,
develop a line of sneakers, and sell them to people. For every one
sneaker bought, another one will be given to a child that needs
sneakers. What were his motivating factors? He remembers seeing a
picture of a barefoot child in Haiti after the earthquake that
occurred there. Instead of forgetting about it, he decided to share
his love of sneakers with those who don’t have the financial means
to purchase one.
How does this relate to Microfinance? Strictly speaking,
nothing. What stuck out to me was that he reminded me of Muhammad
Yunus. While Yunus wasn’t a sneaker fanatic, he was an economist.
When he heard of the famine problem that was facing his country, he
decided to do something about it. One day, he noticed an unused
well. When he asked the farmers about it, they didn’t want to use
the well due to financial reasons. Eventually, he persuaded the
farmers to plant crops without fear of any losses. In the end,
Yunus lost 13,000 takka. However, the fact that the farmers were
able to get along and plant crops to make a living motivated him to
continue helping the area around him.
What did I learn from all this? I learned that in order to
develop something special, you have to have a passion in it. For
the high school student, it was his love of sneakers. For Muhammad
Yunus, it was his love of economics. They may have had different
appeals, but for both of them sharing the passion of what they love
enabled them to produce and promote a thriving social business. It
reminded me that when people are passionate about a subject, what
they do won’t feel like work. Instead, it will be a positive
reinforcement to do what they desire, to show other people what
they love, and to promote something that they care about. I believe
that there are many other people like that New Yorker and Yunus,
and for some of these people all they need is access to credit. If
these people are able to prosper through creating a business that
they enjoy doing, then I believe that we should support them all
the way.
Finance and Risk Assessment Team
Log #
By Matthew Ricardo
This week in GLOBE was very research intensive because of the
mid-term report that is due. I found myself quite fascinated about
the many different statistics and coverage given to the different
geographical areas in which microfinance touches, and those that
have a potential for a microfinance presence. The most surprising
to me is to see the amount of resources the World Bank has devoted
in creating a very informative and comprehensive database that logs
a significant amount of information with respect to the nations and
regions around the world. This resource base from which I was able
to formulate the preliminary analysis of the two countries the
finance team is now researching for our microloan program: Peru and
Haiti. When I came across this information I began to connect it
with some of the objectives that the finance team had placed in the
beginning of the course. The most relevant objective being the one
we set for trying to establish a more uniform approach to
evaluating borrowers for a loan.
There is one fact that continues to remain, which is that even
though there is an understanding that we would like to look for a
mix of both quantitative and qualitative measures to evaluating a
borrower, some of the statistical measures that we can choose to
utilize may not be so applicable to borrowers who do not fit the
evaluation criteria. However, I feel that The World Bank has closed
a bit of the margin by supplying this information. I feel more
confident now; more then ever before, that we can begin to meet
this objective that we set out. With the principal behind this
objective in mind, I would say that simply having this statistical
information on hand is a solid foundation to work with. The idea
behind establishing this criteria is that the future class of GLOBE
will be able to work with an established chain of reasoning for
loan application, perhaps that may even take it a step further and
refine some of the measures themselves. What I do know is that when
I came to this course and still remember the times in which I was
told that the initial couple of weeks might be slow because of lack
of direction. We set out an objective to help future students find
a direction quicker.
I will end with an example as to how I think this information
may be useful. I noticed a section on the World Bank website that
supplied a rating system on the ease of opening a business in a
certain country. What better information for future finance team
members to use in making borrower considerations. This, coupled
with the other information supplied about the current structure of
the economy can lead to some very well thought and reinforced
analysis. I hope that by the time that this course ends the current
finance team can at least establish a basis from which others can
build upon. I feel that we are on to something if we follow this
path.
Marketing and Fundraising Team
Log # 4
By Melissa Gomez
“Make yourselves purses which do not wear out, an unfailing
treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near, nor moth destroys.
For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."- Luke
12:44, the Bible.
I chose this quote from the bible because it caught my eye. The
term ‘make purses of ourselves’ remained with me. When I think of a
purse, I think of ‘safety’. It is where we hold and carry our
prized possessions. Purses are strong, durable, useful, and
convenient and (of course fashionable) bags that we entrust will
hold our valuable possessions. Our treasure. Our personality,
ideas, thoughts and our character on the whole are all our
treasures. We as GLOBE, a microfinance organization are acting as
handbags to those living in poverty. We are accessories to the
poor. We assist them in improving their lives and also give them
the means, the courage and the ability to maintain them. We allow
them to realize their treasure. I love that I can be part of an
organization that examines and analyzes every possible aspect of
poverty and make efforts to combat it by using our generated ideas
and business knowledge. We are in the middle of the semester and we
are still inspired and are still giving it our all. Not only are we
bettering the lives of other people, we are bettering ourselves. We
are implementing our skills in creative ways, learning new ones,
gaining a wider perspective on culture and most of all we are
acting as purses to the poor & also to each other. We are
strong thinkers and doers, we are useful and convenient as we brain
storm and strategize plans to achieve our team’s goals and build
GLOBE as a whole. All these adjectives are what we look for in a
purse-, which we are proving to be. So let us continue to do what
we do as a team and even if things do not go as expected such as
fund raising plans, events and so on, I am happy to know that I
still put in energy and I was able to be a ‘purse’ to someone.
Technology and Communications Team
Log # 4
By Luis Colon
We’ve made it mid way through the semester; the objectives are
many but the task is possible. The team has been working daily to
increase the bar on every goal, big or small. Likes, impressions,
articles, quotes, videos, everything we find helps us see how much
this industry is growing. We’ve been spreading GLOBE to further
reaches within St. John’s. As every semester passes, as every GLOBE
class comes and goes, the growth continues.
Our main objective is to spread this knowledge, to spread
microfinance further than the limits of St. John’s University.
Every networking event and social media platform helps us to get
one step further in spreading this movement not only in our
communities but globally. Our ambition has become our motivation.
Every story we research and find shows us the lives of individuals
who have this same ambition to become pioneers and heroes in their
communities.
Some of the stories we find on our own are amazing, stories that
make you believe that everything is possible people who bring
themselves with the help of microfinance from sleeping in tin
houses or streets to owning and thriving businesses. Dr. Sama
enlightened us with a very similar story that gave me new insight
into the attitude of these successful individuals. Dr. Sama spoke
of a person who was asked to rate his/her happiness on a scale of 1
to 10. The person responded 10; even though they are living in
poverty they believed that they were rich, in life. Many of these
individuals take the chance some succeed and some fail.
“It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to
succeed." -Theodore Roosevelt
Against all odds, the great attitude and appreciation these
people have towards opportunities and the fortunate things they
have, can teach us all a lesson in seeing and analyzing what we
have in our lives and what we can do with the opportunities we are
given every day.
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