Application
Solidarity lending is widespread in microfinance today, particularly in Asia. In addition to Grameen Bank, major practitioners include SEWA, Bank Rakyat Indonesia, Accion International, FINCA, BRAC and SANASA. The Calmeadow Foundation was another important pioneer.
The Microbanking Bulletin tracks solidarity lending as a separate microfinance methodology. Of 446 microfinance institutions worldwide that it was tracking at the end of 2005, 39 lent only through this method, while another 205 used a mix of solidarity and individual lending. The average loan balance outstanding at solidarity lenders was $109 (19% of local gross national income), compared to $1,024 (61% of local gross national income) among individual lenders. This shows not only that solidarity lenders are meeting the needs of a significantly poorer market segment, but also that they are doing it in significantly poorer countries.
In Costa Rica, many companies enable their employees to organize Asociaciones Solidaristas (Solidarism Associations), which enables them to create saving funds, loans, and financial activities (for example managing the company's coffee shop) with financial support from the company.Movimiento Solidarista Costarricense's website
Read more about this topic: Solidarity Lending
Famous quotes containing the word application:
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely a loose application of the word. Consider the flea!—incomparably the bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance of fear were courage.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“The main object of a revolution is the liberation of man ... not the interpretation and application of some transcendental ideology.”
—Jean Genet (1910–1986)
“Great abilites are not requisite for an Historian; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent. He has facts ready to his hand; so there is no exercise of invention. Imagination is not required in any degree; only about as much as is used in the lowest kinds of poetry. Some penetration, accuracy, and colouring, will fit a man for the task, if he can give the application which is necessary.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)