Fall 2012 News and Events

Hello MFWG Members!

The Microfinance Working Group is excited to announce several upcoming events. First and foremost, we will be holding a kick-off meeting this Wednesday to discuss our plans to host a TEDx conference and launch our own student-led non-profit.

Wednesday, September 26th

MFWG Fall Kick-Off Meeting @ Havana Central7:30pm - 9:30pm Havana Central (2911 Broadway)

The event will be a great opportunity to meet other MFWG members and learn more about our exciting plans for 2012-2013. There will be free food (delicious Cuban appetizers) and free drinks for the first 25 people who attend.

Wednesday, October 3rd

(1) Money and Power for the World’s Poorest Women: Savings Groups not Microfinance as the Best Path for Deep Outreach Financial Inclusion 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm International Affairs Building, Room 1302 A discussion with Jeffrey Ashe, Director of Community Finance at Oxfam America and Adjunct Associate Professor, School of International and Public Affairs. Sponsor: Economic and Political Development Concentration

(2) Profiling Credit Risk for the Informal Sector 6:30pm - 8:00pm Morgan Stanley World HQ (1585 Broadway 4th Floor Auditorium) Access to finance in the informal sector is hampered by the lack of information on the borrowers. Clients have no financial history and no credit score. In this evening’s discussion Megan Oxman, Program Officer of Innovative Finance at the Gates Foundation will give an overview of the barriers that make it hard for the 90% of the 2.5 billion people in the world who live on less than $2 per day to have access to formal financial tools. One of the panelists will be former MFWG board member, Nicole Stubbs! The event is free to Microfinance Club of NY members and $15 for non-members.

Wednesday October 10th

MFWG Movie Night: A screening of the documentary “Micro Debt” 6:00pm - 8:00pm Location TBD

The Micro Debt Trailer from Paul James Gomes on Vimeo.

Micro Debt is a documentary by the award-winning Danish filmmaker Tom Heinemann. In this film, Heinemann looks at the dark side of the micro-credit industry in Bangladesh, India and Mexico. The documentary raises the issue of “questionable” loan transfers by Yunus and questions whether micro loans are fit for purpose as the “poor always have to pay”. The MFWG board is planning several additional events, so please make sure to check our frequent update emails!

Cheers, Emily, Tabitha, Ethan, and Caro

Drumroll, please…

It gives us great pleasure to announce after compiling the votes from Facebook, e-mail, and other entries that SIPA/Columbia’s new student-led microfinance organization will be called:

The Morningside Microfinance Project

As the top two vote-getters were neck and neck and far ahead of the rest of the pack, the MFWG Board decided to combine the winners into a single entry.

Now comes the fun part! We’d love to have some help from our fellow SIPA/Columbia students and alumni with three important elements:

1) Web design: We’ll need help setting up the website as a place people can come to learn more, volunteer, and contribute.

2) Logo design: The Morningside Microfinance needs a snazzy logo to use on the website and on its documents/materials—if you’ve got the skills, we’d love to see what you’ve got!

3) Lawyerly help: We’ll need to incorporate and then begin the process of getting 501(c)3 status as a non-profit, so if you can help with the legal aspects of set-up, please let us know.

Thanks to everyone for their votes, input, and enthusiasm. This is only the beginning and now the fun part starts—please stay tuned for how you can get further involved!

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

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