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:
“The receipt to make a speaker, and an applauded one too, is short and easy.—Take of common sense quantum sufficit, add a little application to the rules and orders of the House, throw obvious thoughts in a new light, and make up the whole with a large quantity of purity, correctness, and elegancy of style.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“By an application of the theory of relativity to the taste of readers, to-day in Germany I am called a German man of science, and in England I am represented as a Swiss Jew. If I come to be regarded as a bête noire the descriptions will be reversed, and I shall become a Swiss Jew for the Germans and a German man of science for the English!”
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955)
“The best political economy is the care and culture of men; for, in these crises, all are ruined except such as are proper individuals, capable of thought, and of new choice and the application of their talent to new labor.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)