MICRODREAMS
THE IDEA
Turbocharge microfinance with business training: deliver small loans with business instruction and individual tailoring via a financially sustainable operation
Greg Casagrande
Armed with a fistful of finance and accounting degrees, Greg was ready to leave a career in the automotive industry and apply his skills in a very different kind of endeavor. He and his family wound up in Samoa where he launched and brought to profitability the first microenterprise organization in the Pacific Islands.
Microcredit alone isn’t the answer –
you need to make sure people can do something profitable with it.
Microfinance has brought access to capital to millions of poor people around the world. Looking at the track record of microfinance in terms of real wealth created, Greg Casagrande decided that microfinance isn’t enough: you need to deliver micro enterprise creation to empower families out of poverty. His work in Samoa showed that business training could be delivered efficiently to create thousands of successful microenterprises through a financially self-sufficient operation. The South Pacific Business Development model combines 1) a requirement to use initial loans to start a business with 2) effective business training and 3) a tailored approach to loan progression that helps ensure that additional capital is there as soon as people are ready for it. Greg and his team have loaned $8 million to over 10,000 micro-entrepreneurs, helping lift Samoa from the ranks of the poorest nations. Now Greg has launched Microdreams, a not-for-profit platform that will launch a replication of the model in Tonga, and help other organizations deliver effective micro-enterprise operations without the need for donor subsidies.
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