VOTE: New student-run, hands-on microfinance organization


We at SIPA’s Microfinance Working Group (MFWG) are hoping to accomplish a lot during the summer break—most importantly, moving ahead with plans to start a hands-on, student-led microfinance organization at Columbia that will provide funding and training to entrepreneurs in the Morningside Heights community interested in starting or growing their own small business.

We’re at an important stage in the process—time to choose a name! If you have just a moment, I would greatly appreciate if you’d PLEASE RESPOND (by sending an e-mail to sipa.microfinance AT gmail.com) WITH THE NAME THAT GETS YOUR VOTE. Remember, this is your organization! Following are the suggestions that have been submitted:

1) The Morningside Project
2) Morningside Microfinance
3) SEATS: SIPA Entreprenurial and Training Services
4) CAMP: Columbia Alliance for Microfinance Programs or Columbia Applied Microfinance Program or Columbia and Morningside Partnership
5) CEDS: Columbia Entrepreneurial Development Service
6) SEED: Students Empowering Entrepreneurial Development
7) CUrrency
8) Morningside Entrepreneurship Support Program

We are planning to tally all the results (from Facebook, our listserv, our website, etc.) next week and announce the results—and the new organization’s official name—by next Friday. This is a very important step that will let us move ahead with all sorts of administrative needs like incorporating, applying for non-profit status, registering a website, and designing a logo and communications materials. It’ll also bring us closer to the fun, programmatic aspects of the planning phase: being able to approach partner organizations, finish developing our activities and the structure though which we’ll engage our entrepreneurs, and begin thinking about recruiting our first group of small business owners.

As a reminder, if you’d like to read where things stand now (and add more ideas yourself), here’s the link to our Google Planning Doc: 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1x0npJ69nWyPT2tN1mJ5t7seM8IfgtP5jw_8fCNNOmyE/edit


Thanks to our panelists for a great event…

This THURSDAY, April 19th, 12:35-2:00pm in Room 410

The MFWG Board is pleased to announce that we’ll be hosting a panel discussion under the theme of “Challenges and New Approaches in Microfinance” on Thursday, April 19th from 12:35 to 1:35 in IAB Room 410. 
We have a great line-up of panelists, so the discussion will be quite informative and lively! Our panelists include:
Chuck Waterfield, CEO of Microfinance Trasnparency (http://www.mftransparency.org/)
Susan Johnson, Sr. Lecturer at the University of Bath (http://www.bath.ac.uk/sps/staff/susan-johnson/index.html)
Nadine Chehade, Business Development Manager at Planet Finance (http://www.planetrating.com/EN/team.html)
Sasha Fisher, Executive Director and Co-founder of Spark Microgrants (http://www.sparkmicrogrants.org/)
We look forward to seeing you all there!

Great Announcement

Hi everyone,

We’ve got a great announcement—we have received approval to start our very own student-led microfinance organization at SIPA that will help people in the Morningside Heights community start their own businesses (and also give Columbia students a chance to get hands-on experience managing a great development project). So far, we’ve received input from about 20 students but because the organization will belong to the larger Columbia/SIPA community, we’d love to get everyone’s input on everything from choosing a name to how to go about selecting the entrepreneurs we’ll work with. Please feel free to add any suggestions to the open Google Doc—thanks in advance for your help and for volunteering your time:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1x0npJ69nWyPT2tN1mJ5t7seM8IfgtP5jw_8fCNNOmyE/edit

Microfinance Internship Panel 2012  

February 8th, 2012

-Panelists representing many different microfinance institutions

-Presentation by Nicole Gates owner of Soul Sisters Quisine on her experience as a Grameen loan borrower

-UNIQLO social business apparel raffle

Thanks to everyone who attended and presented! You made it a success!!