1. I try and keep possessions to a few treasured items.
2. I lack space
3. I feel I am extraordinarily wealthy in terms of possessions compared to most of the world.
4. My friends go crazy trying to figure out what to give me.
5. Others need help far more than I need gifts no matter how creative or thoughtful.
Fast forward to a walk I took today through my village. At the place where people throw away trash a man was tearing up cardboard that filled the back of his Mercedes.
I thought back to a story I had just written about a World Council of Credit Unions Matching pilot savings programs in Mexico where people put a few coins in the credit union regularly for six months. At the end of the period the savings are matched by donations. One of the women in the program is saving to buy cardboard to patch her roof. What a contrast and I told him about it. He probably thought I was crazy.
So I am asking anyone who intends to give me a gift this year for any reason, don't. Instead give me something that will make me far happier and help someone go to the dentist, buy a sewing machine to start a business, buy uniforms so their children can go to school. That would mean more to me than anything else I can think of. Here's more about the program.
MatchSavings.org is a campaign of World Council of Credit Unions (WOCCU), a non-profit organization to support the growing international movement of credit unions and other financial cooperatives. WOCCU established MatchSavings.org in October 2008 to help educate people living in poverty about the benefits of saving and to provide them an incentive to get started. Your gifts help match the savings of an individual in a remote community who has never before had a savings account.
During this launch phase, WOCCU is working with one partner credit union, Caja Yanga, in the state of Veracruz, Mexico. Caja Yanga sends employees into rural communities to introduce the credit union and the financial services it offers. The communities rarely have a financial institution of their own, so the credit union's visit is the first opportunity people have to open a savings account and access loans and insurance at affordable rates. Caja Yanga offers them the opportunity to open a six-month matched savings account to get started, which is where you come in.
When you make a gift through MatchSavings.org, your contribution is transferred to Caja Yanga to match the deposits of individual savers like those you meet on MatchSavings.org. The savers decide from the start what their savings goals are: improve housing, finance education, expand their microbusiness or pay medical bills. They commit to depositing a set amount when the credit union staff member visits the community each month in order to receive a match on the principal amount they save. After faithfully saving for six months, the individual may withdraw the savings plus interest and receive your match.
Yanga credit union in Córdoba, Mexico. Caja Yanga is situated in the coffee and sugarcane growing region of Veracruz state in southeastern Mexico. The credit union was established in 1988 and serves more than 40,000 members from rural, mountainous areas of Veracruz.
As part of a WOCCU program supported by the Mexican government's Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fishing and Food (SAGARPA) through its Proyecto de Asistencia Técnica al Microfinanciamiento Rural (PATMIR) project, Caja Yanga is one of 55 credit unions in Mexico to bring its services—by motorcycle, boat or by foot—directly to poor people living in hard-to-reach, marginalized communities. The credit union is oftentimes the only affordable place people can start a savings account or take out a loan in these communities.
Join us in the grassroots effort to alleviate poverty through saving. Match a poor person's first savings account for housing, microbusiness, health or education.
MatchSavings.org | save for change
Posts
1 comment:
Fantastic program DL. Thanks for making me aware of it. I'll talk to the girls about it and see what we can do.
Post a Comment