GIVE featured in Ode Magazine

In October, 2010, GIVE founder Steven Van Yoder published a feature story, "Fixing the free market", in Ode Magazine about the role of cooperatives in addressing global poverty. Fixing the Free Market provides a comprehensive take on how co-ops in general, but also details how they are playing a growing role in poverty alleviation in the developing world by merging economic growth with social goals. The story was recently recommended by the Tucson Citizen as one of Ode's top stories in 2010.

The story showcases GIVE's work in Manila, Philippines, with field partner Inner City Development Cooperative (ICDC), a cooperative that is bringing fresh life to impoverished neighborhoods in Manila. Through the Urban Entrepreneurship Center co-founded with GIVE in 2010, ICDC is offering microcredit loans, training in business skills and financial literacy, healthcare support, emergency programs and other services to urban squatter communities .

Teaching Barefoot MBA to Microentrepreneurs

Since February 2010, Inner City Development Cooperative (ICDC), GIVE’s field partner in the Philippines, has trained 1,700 microloan recipients in the Barefoot MBA. It was just last fall that their staff were trained in the program themselves, so they haven’t wasted any time passing it along to people who can benefit from the training.

Many of the Filipinos who receive microloans had to empty any savings they had in the wake of last winter’s typhoons. With huge sections of Manila damaged or destroyed, residents often had to spend everything they had to get food, water, and shelter for their families.

Because savings accounts looked so depleted, ICDC tailored the Barefoot MBA lessons toward helping loan recipients save money. One of the benefits of the program is that it is modular, so MFIs can tailor the training they offer to the specific needs of the community they’re in. This flexibility makes the Barefoot MBA ideal for a number of situations because it can be relevant to all of them.

In case you’re wondering, the program is working! 40% of the 1700 people trained this year have increased their savings. With this kind of response, ICDC and GIVE are excited about what could happen when they start teaching the other modules in the program, probably sometime this winter.