Thursday, March 22. 2007
Eric Thurman and Phillip Smith, both of whom are active microfinance proponents, will release a book about the microfinance industry through the publisher McGraw-Hill. Mr. Thurman is the former CEO of Opportunity International, a Christian microfinance network, HOPE International, a Canadian development agency, and Geneva Global Inc., a philanthropic investment firm based in the United States. Mr. Thurman is the founder of the fair trade corporation One World Projects, and is currently CEO of the Protos Fund, an institutional investment fund. Phillip Smith is the former CEO of Prize Energy Corporation and Tide West Oil Company, two US-based oil corporations. He is now an active philanthropist. The book, A BILLION BOOTSTRAPS: Microcredit, Barefoot Banking, and the Business Solution for Ending Poverty, explains the workings of the microfinance industry from the perspective of the donor. They address why they believe it permanently changes poverty and ensure the reader that an ordinary person can “accelerate the revolution” while earning substantial returns on microfinance investments.
The PR Newswire reports that A BILLION BOOTSTRAPS “explores the causes of poverty and the reasons why traditional poverty-alleviation programs fail.” The authors use an investment approach to encourage readers to practice as much prudence with their philanthropic investments as they do with their other investments. Mr. Smith and Mr. Thurman also encourage investors to commit more funds by detailing how many lives are changed through specific amounts of donated money, and they illustrate how leveraging contributions to microcredit can “lift one person in Rwanda out of deadly poverty” can cost as little as USD 2.20.
The authors say of their financial analysis approach to the book, “Poverty responds to the same investment principles that fuel business growth anywhere in the world.” They encourage investors to seek out charities that offer the best return on investment, require measurable returns, and investigate the true overhead costs of the charity. There is also a chapter walking potential investors through reliable ways he or she can connect with microfinance institutions and introducing critical questions to ask oneself before investing, writing, “Microcredit is not as simple as sending money and a half-page loan agreement to an entrepreneurial person in a faraway country.”
A BILLION BOOTSTRAPS addresses the limits of microcredit, why microcredit interest rates are so high, and whether microcredit has more success in rural or urban areas. The book also points out the benefits of applying microcredit techniques to other poverty-alleviation services.
Bibliographic information:A BILLION BOOTSTRAPSMicrocredit, Barefoot Banking, and the Business Solution for Ending PovertyPhil Smith & Eric ThurmanMcGraw-Hill, April 2007ISBN: 0071489975- Lisa Kalajian, Microcapital.org Writer
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