“PDP is the city’s sole provider of microloans, a concept pioneered by Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus. Yunus’ Grameen Bank, founded in 1976, has loaned about $6.5 billion in U.S. dollars to some of the world’s poorest people, and boasts a repayment rate of 98 percent (your bank’s rate is closer to 70).
This success has turned conventional wisdom about banking on its head — it was once believed that people in poverty couldn’t be given loans — and has made people think hard about the meaning of charity. Yunus believes that a loan provides the borrower with more than money: By successfully paying one off, a borrower gains not only capital and improved credit, but pride, strength and confidence in her abilities. It also makes the lending program self-sustaining: The Grameen Bank hasn’t accepted donor money since 1995.
And yet, PDP, which was founded in 1989, hasn’t embraced the Grameen model — only 20 percent of the nonprofit’s clients end up choosing to take a loan. Instead, PDP invests in development services — technical assistance, computer space, accounting, — which it provided to 400 clients last year. And it is almost completely reliant on donors. It’s a classic charity.”
Read the whole City Paper article “Lost in Translation” by James Beale
Dave Speers is an online marketing consultant and start up junky that has worked with a wide variety of Philadelphia Start-Ups . Dave spends most his time annoying really smart people at Indy Hall co-working collaborative.
