Impact100 Sonoma Members-Only Education Forum
Close to 100 of our Impact100 members gathered for the January 28 Members-only Educational Forum held at theSonomaCommunity
Members at Event
Center. Impact100 President B.J. Bischoff welcomed both new and returning members with the news that our numbers had reached 195 and what that would mean to our level of giving in 2012 – a distribution of $195,000 to be added to the $267,000 already contributed since our inception in 2009, for a total of $462,000 for our Sonoma Valley nonprofits. Attendees were reminded that following the presentations, they would have the opportunity to sign up for a variety of committees that will ultimately be responsible for supporting the grant-making process for 2012. For a list of those committees, click here. Committee descriptions.
The focus of attention then turned to our guest speakers and the topic of microfinance – first from an international perspective, then to the local, and to the personal.
B.J. with Nicole Levine, Betsy Brill and Ann Reder
Betsy Brill, a former newspaper journalist, shared the stories of women that she encountered during her travels inEgypt,India,Bangladesh, andIndonesiaas she and her husband were studying and writing about different approaches to microfinance. Her talk began with a simple photograph of two women fromBangladeshsmiling broadly at the camera with a warm, strong confidence, and we soon learned the story behind their personal journeys. These were two of thousands of women who have crossed the poverty level of a $1/day existence thanks to the development of numerous women’s micro-loan programs that have grown up throughout the third world. The sizes of the loans vary from $25 to $500 and resulting in a variety of significant self-employment opportunities – a woman’s purchase of a cart to carry multiple bolts of cloth to market each day instead of the single bolt that she could carry on her head; the ability of a woman to purchase quality potatoes directly for re-sale and then expand her business to include the sale of other vegetables; the purchase of a cow to sell its calf and its milk and then invest in the purchase of chickens and the sale of their eggs… With such loans the small borrowers’ incomes have increased 12.9% over three years, and the women boast a 95-98% repayment rate, with the opportunity for reinvestment and more money to loan to others.
But this model is not exclusive to the countries described above. The second speaker, Nicole Levine described the impact of the Women’s Initiative for Self-Employment (WISE), which has been assisting high-potential low-income women in the San Francisco Bay Area to reach their dreams of business ownership. The program includes three phases: training to learn personal skills and how to develop a business plan, funding with loans ranging from $500 – $35,000, and support to provide ongoing services and a sense of community. Starting in the Mission District of San Francisco, there are now 14 WISE locations inNorthern Californiaand they have produced more than 5,000 jobs in the Bay Area alone. WISE has recently come toSonomaand was one of the recipients of an Impact100 community grant in 2011. They will begin their first training session this spring at the Sonoma Valley Teen Services.
The final speaker brought microfinance to a personal level. Bridget Hayes had been an adult education teacher focusing on bi-lingual education when the economic crash suddenly resulted in her unemployment and the need to re-invent herself. It was a bit of serendipity that brought her to WISE, but today she is starting on a new journey of her own – a mobile classroom that will enable her to bring her educational skills to where they are needed. She described the experiences gained in the WISE program as walking in with nothing but questions, fears, and doubts and walking out with answers, faith in herself, and a game plan.
For a podcast of the entire event, click here… {upload in progress}
We thank all of our speakers for their stories and insights and our sponsors:
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