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Weekly UpdatesBrief Program Overview
The Global Microloan Program, GLOBE (GLOBAL LOAN OPPORTUNITIES FOR BUDDING ENTREPRENEURS), serves as a student-managed lending arm to the world's poorest entrepreneurs, leveraging the resources available in the Tobin College of Business (TCB) and the Vincentian Center for Church and Society at St. John's University (STJ). In the Vincentian tradition, GLOBE would help the poor help themselves by boosting the earning capacity of local talent and serving the needs of their local communities.
The organization of this program begins with a class of selected students who demonstrate a strong record of academic achievement, an understanding of the global business environment, and an expressed interest in the world of microfinance. Academically qualified students are asked to apply to the program, and individual interviews determine final acceptance into the program-related course.
Students enrolled in the course engage in assessing the lending risk of applicants, managing loan and repayment terms, reviewing business plans and program processes, identifying and procuring technology needs, marketing and promoting the program, and fund raising. Student-managed loans will be administered with the help of an on-line, dedicated, interactive website (under construction) linked to the University web page, and funds would be provided by donations from anyone in the world who has access to the Internet, including members of the St. John's Community and beyond. Donations and loan repayments will flow through an internal restricted fund, and will be disbursed to borrowers with a small administrative fee ("interest") attached to help recover a portion of the associated administrative costs, with all direct proceeds going to support future loans.
The Daughters of Charity, located in some 72 developing countries around the globe, act as field partners, identifying entrepreneurial talent in their provinces and assisting in the disbursement and collection of loans and loan repayments. The program is equipping our field partners with laptops and digital cameras to facilitate their participation.
Link with Mission
GLOBE, as proposed, has a strong link with the Mission of STJ, specifically in serving the promise that: "We aim not only to be excellent professionals with an ability to analyze and articulate clearly what is, but also to develop the ethical and aesthetic values to imagine and help realize what might be." Further, the program reflects the Vincentian spirit that guides academic programming at the University in striving to reach out to disenfranchised populations through community service and "reflective learning." With program implementation, resources are devoted to mutually beneficial ends--as tools of instruction for students and faculty, as well as tools of sustenance for needy beneficiaries of the loans around the world.
Key Accomplishments to Date
The Global Microloan Program has an established Steering Committee chaired by Dr. Linda M. Sama. Its members include: Sr. Margaret John Kelly and Mary Ann Dantuono of the Vincentian Center, John Tutunjian from the TCB Board of Advisors, James Monnier representing Institutional Advancement, Sr. Felicia Mazzola from International Project Services headquartered in Michigan (who has been enormously helpful in drafting Daughters' field participation), and student representative Antoni Kolev.
Early in the Fall of 2007, the Steering Committee was charged by Dr. Steven Papamarcos, Dean of the TCB, to construct a proposal for the Global Microloan Program, which was forwarded to him in October of 2007. Ongoing work over the past 18 months has resulted in a signed agreement with our field partners and the confirmed participation of 10 Daughters of Charity in six different countries: Bolivia, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria and Thailand. Other countries are expressing a keen interest in joining the program in the very near future. Participants have received Loan Application and Evaluation Forms and are currently identifying viable borrower candidates. Interest from prospective donors suggests that GLOBE will receive pledges totaling over $100,000 by year-end, about 25 percent of which has been received as donated funds to-date. Future donations will help us not only assist the entrepreneurs, but also build a full-blown educational experience for our students by creating a STUDENT FELLOWS PROGRAM, permitting enrolled students to travel to the areas that benefit from the disbursed loans and to see the impact of microlending to the poor first-hand. In addition, students are designing static web pages for internal STJ use to beta test certain operational details of the program, with the expectation that the interactive website will be up and running for public use by late Fall 2009.
Presently, students are busy at work creating promotional materials, planning a Microfinance Day at the University, engaging in fund-raising campaigns, setting up an accounting system, establishing loan terms, researching country risk, determining administrative costs including bank wiring fees, and working with the IT Department to construct the web site. Student teams also developed the official name (GLOBE) and logo of the Global Microloan Program, which will be used on various marketing and promotional materials. Class hours are further devoted to readings and lectures on microcredit, including ethical and gender issues, as well as designing products, services and lending models that suit a variety of cultural environments. Readings include an assortment of texts on the economics of microfinance and social entrepreneurship, as well as the book Banker to the Poor by Muhammad Yunus. Dr. Yunus is the Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2006 for his visionary work with Grameen Bank in his home country of Bangladesh, a bank he founded that engages in microcredit to the poor, especially women, in an effort to lift their families out of poverty. Guest Speakers have been invited to the class from Project Enterprise, a NYC-based provider of micro-business loans, Grameen America--an extension of Yunus's Grameen Bank of Bangladesh operating in a U.S. context, and JPMorgan Chase.
Should you want to learn more or help in some way, please contact Linda Sama at: samal@stjohns.edu and mention that you read about the St. John's Global Microloan Program in the Review of Business.
New at The Peter J. Tobin College of Business
Dr. Linda M. Sama, Director
samel@stjohns.edu
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