Ymicro News
Welcome to the Ymicro.org blog

With a couple of clicks on www.ymicro.org you can share Christmas with a young woman, or man in Liberia, The Gambia, Sri Lanka, or Colombia.  There are fifty postings on the site of personal micro loans that will only be possible with your donation of $25 or more.

Each loan will enable the borrower to start or expand a micro business that they are already trained to do.  The local YMCA will provide coaching to each loan recipient increasing the potential for success.  And each successful new entrepreneur will be able to better support their family.

Share the hope of Christmas.  Start a new relationship with a person you’ve not yet met but who needs your “hand up” and see how different your new year and theirs can be as you follow their story throughout 2012.

How many web sites can you think of that you could add a link from to Ymicro?

Your official YMCA site / the more informal web sites of different YMCA programs and groups / the web site of your faith community / your school web site / the site you helped create for your alumni reunion, your softball team, your travel group, your lake association, your book club, your prayer group, your extended family …

It’s easy to add a link to Micro Finance.  It’s a good way to share a personal giving tool with people with whom you already have something in common … and with Thanksgiving and Christmas coming, it’s a good time to do it.

Note: Youth, as used in this blog, refers to the 18 to 35 age-range.

Many Liberian youth grew up as child soldiers. Schools did not operate in most parts of the nation during the 15 years of civil war that ended in the mid 2000s. Today the restless unemployed make up 80% of the youth generation.

In 2005 Liberia held it’s first peacetime election putting Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf into the office of President.  This year – 2011 – two things happened: Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was awarded the Nobel peace prize and the second peacetime election was held. Let’s look at that election in terms of the youth of the country.

A majority of the youth voted in the first round on October 11th.  There was a 71.6% voter turnout overall. It was a peaceful event.

The YMCA had a hand in it.  In advance of Election Day the YMCA organized peer led discussions of the issues that concern youth across the nation.  Then they engaged all of the candidates for office in these issues publicly. They urged their peers to vote.  Finally the YMCA youth became recognized poll watchers on Election Day.  They influenced the national agenda and then followed through to the ballot box.

But the story does not end there.  Since the first round did not result in a majority for any one candidate, there was a runoff scheduled between Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and Winston Tubman for November 8^th. Ten days before the election Tubman felt he could not win so he called for a boycott of the election and violence followed including the death of several people the day before the election.  Voters were afraid to go to the polls.  Yet on November 8^th 38% of voters did go to the polls and elected Johnson-Sirleaf.  But the results are not accepted by everyone, leaving many youth uneasy and uncertain about the future.  The international press suggests that things will get much worse before they get better.  Liberia is back on the edge.

The response of the Liberian YMCA is that now is the time for the YMCA to redouble its efforts to engage youth in livelihood programs, to demonstrate commitment to individuals and small groups, to teach advocacy through real action, to strengthen communities by increasing assets for all, and to expand apprenticeships and micro loans!

In the midst of conditions that scare others, and when it is understandable to want to stay home and wait and see what happens next, how significant it is that people like Edward (National General Secretary) and Tim (National Program Director) and the rest of the Liberian YMCA leadership team do the opposite.  They continue every aspect of their work with youth. They fight the return of violence with the highest level of youth development work.

Now is the time for you and I help David in Gbarnga, Jamestta in Ganta, Moore in Kakata, Vivien in Monrovia and Annie in Zorzor (the front line staff working with youth) by making a donation to one of the loans they have posted on Ymicro.org.  Micro finance is not the whole answer to the Liberian challenge but it is an important piece.  It is one small step that we can take to be a part of empowering the youth of Liberia to lead their country away from the edge of violence.

At ymicro you can create a team, choose a loan to support and give together.  Your team can be a group of friends, a family, work team, sports team, school team, church group, Y camp staff team – you get the idea.

One person creates the team by clicking on the Donor Teams tab.  Each member of the team registers and joins the team.

Then the team decides if you are going to each donate to the same loan individually, and each get your own tax deduction, or if you are going to pool your money and have the team leader make the donation.

Some teams will choose to fund a complete loan and follow the single new entrepreneur as updates are posted.  Other teams will use a diversified donation strategy with each team member donating to a different loan. This way the team can follow all of the different new entrepreneurs in the team portfolio.

Create a team now!

There are 50 people waiting for your help at Ymicro.org.

19 are in Sri Lanka (South Asia); 21 are in Liberia and The Gambia (West Africa); and 10 are in Colombia(South America).

45 are women starting new businesses to support themselves and their families.  5 are men who are starting new businesses to support themselves and their families.

Ymicro.org is available to anyone seeking a way to lend a hand-up to a specific person (generally 18-35 years of age) and to get to know that person through web updates.

Click here now to lend.

Nine loans have just been posted, each to be made to a woman or man in her twenties or early thirties, who has been deaf since childhood.  Extended fever during early childhood, often associated with malaria, has resulted in their loss of hearing.  The stories you’ll see related to these loans center around how each borrower has recently developed a micro business plan that builds on their experience based learnings about business and outlines what they want to use the loan for and how much they project earning as a result.  Several of these business plans include taking advantage of their disability.  If you are interested, sort loans by country – Liberia – and see who’s plan you would like to back with your donation.

Lest we get confused about “donating to the poor” let’s think about who is in fact rich and who is really poor.  Microfinance is a tool to help people living in economic poverty overcome barriers to starting their own small businesses and help them support themselves and their family, put food on the table, a roof over their heads, find education for their children and avoid or deal with illness and disease.

The microfinance borrower is economically poor but she is generally very rich in other ways.  She has hope.  She cares about her kids.  She has respectful relationships with many of her relatives and neighbors.  She has faith.  She has patience and determination.

The micro philanthropy donor often has only modest discretionary income beyond her core expenses.  True, she has much more income than the borrower.  But what makes her rich is that she cares for others.  She shares with others.  She has hope for the future.  She has many respectful relationships and wants to establish more with people in other cultures.

In a very real sense Ymicro.org is a Global Family of rich people – rich in what makes life worth living.  And in this family economic concerns are being addressed through donations and loans and hard work.

Ymicro.org promotes wealth in faith, hope and yes, charity … fostered through respectful relationships.

Loans posted by the YMCA in Batticaloa, Sri Lanka are a result of the commitment of that YMCA to village work.   The Y assigns a staff person to a group of villages which that person visits every week.  The staff member builds relationships with the village, relationships based on trust.  It takes time and patience.

Y staff get to know the leaders of each village so that they are not seen as competing for power.  They get to know the informal leaders or persons of influence within the village as well.  And they get to know the most vulnerable people – the women and men who the YMCA has come to serve.

For several years, microfinance has been an important service the Batticaloa YMCA brings to village work.  They form trust groups of women and work with each group to introduce simple principles of micro business, micro finance, savings and budgeting.  Today there is competition with other organizations – formal and informal – that visit many of the same villages.  The YMCA competes successfully by making long term relationships and by offering loans sized and with terms and conditions that respond to the needs of the women.  Two keys are: very reasonable interest rates and realistic time frames for repayment.

Best known for being an organization long established in cities across Asia, some of the most important work of the YMCA is done in the small villages that surround those cities.  Village work – an important place for YMCA microfinance.

The Cali, Colombia YMCA seeks to help whole communities.  That’s one reason they are taking a collaborative approach to microfinance.  You’ll find that the loans they have posted are being administered by another NGO (non-governmental organization) instead of by the YMCA.

The YMCA has found two different MFI’s (micro finance institutions) that are working in the same poor community/neighborhood as the YMCA.  By combining their efforts the collaborating organizations can bring a variety of assets to the community and potentially empower the community to lift it self out of poverty.

The Cali YMCA brings expertise in education (schools for street kids), in social work, leadership development and community organization.  The MFIs bring expertise and products in the economic sector.  Together the residents can begin to secure small sections of the generally crime ridden neighborhood, get their kids off the street and into safe environments, support adults in licit economic activities, and engage all that are interested in democratic community organizations.

Focus on the community, work together, bring to the table as many community assets as possible … and let’s see if long term change is possible, one neighborhood at a time.  Keep your eye on Cali, Colombia.  Let’s see what organizational collaboration can do.

You’ll notice that many of our posted loans are from West Africa – Liberia and The Gambia.  These loans are being made directly by the local YMCAs to participants in their Livelihood programs.

The Liberia and Gambia YMCAs have received major support from Y Care International, UK, for multi year Livelihood projects.  These projects focus on vocational and apprenticeship training, small business training, life skills and coaching for youth leaders to engage with local political leaders on issues of employment, skill development, job creation and good governance.

Participants are in the 18-30 age group and are recruited on the basis of meeting certain “vulnerability” criteria.  The job skill training component generally entails engagement in a nine month apprenticeship with a trainer who owns his or her own business. They learn by working daily in the trainers’ shop.  It is the participants who successfully compete the apprenticeship and who have the dream and drive to start their own micro business that apply to the YMCA for a micro loan.

The YMCAs of Liberia and The Gambia are utilizing two compatible resources: Y Care for the initial project grant and Ymicro for continuing work with “graduates” of the project.  The local YMCA is using international support tools to accomplish their goals.  This strikes me as effective cooperation within the Global Y Family!