{"id":22560,"key":"Mech425_Microfinance_Project","title":"Mech425 Microfinance Project","latest":{"id":1207343,"timestamp":"2025-11-27T22:04:17Z"},"content_model":"wikitext","license":{"url":"https://www.appropedia.org/Appropedia:Copyrights","title":"CC-BY-SA-4.0"},"source":"{{Project data\n| made = No\n| cost = USD 25\n| type = Microfinance project\n| links = https://www.kiva.org/team/mech425\n| location = Kingston, Canada\n}}\n\n'''[[Microfinance]] project'''. '''Microcredit''' banking offers business training, peer support, and small loans (even only a few dollars) to the world's poorest people. It has been extremely successful at driving [[sustainable development]] as we saw in the readings/video for last class. Microfinance is a form of [[Socially responsible investing]]. To continue where the last mini-project left off - this project is meant to give you more insight into the conditions of the Global South in order to inform your [[Mech425 AT Project|AT Project Design]]. ''(You should already have a basic literature review done for it).''\n\nThe course has a ''lending team'', MECH425, on [[Kiva]], a non-profit website that allows you to lend as little as $25 to a specific low-income entrepreneur across the globe. You choose who to lend to - whether a baker in Afghanistan, a goat herder in Uganda, a farmer in Peru, a restaurateur in Cambodia, or a tailor in Iraq - and as they repay the loan, you get your money back.\n\n<u>Step 1</u>: Join the team here: [https://www.kiva.org/team/mech425 http://www.kiva.org/team/mech425]\n\nOnce you're a part of the team, you can choose to have a future loan on Kiva \"count\" towards our team's impact. The loan is still yours, and repayments still come to you - but you can also choose to have the loan show up in our team's collective portfolio.\n\n<u>Step 2</u>: Peruse the Kiva site in order to understand how microfinance works and look at the type of entrepreneurs and why they are requesting loans.\n\n<u>Step 3</u>: Loan and discuss.\nFor the microfinance project please make at least one loan on Kiva and write NO MORE THAN 1 PAGE on your choice and your reasoning to maximize sustainable development. Alternatively, if you are not in a position to make a loan at this same time -- look through the loan options and write a page on the loan you would like to make and why.\n\n'''Papers are due in class on next Friday 3/26 at the beginning of class'''.\n\n{{Page data\n| license = CC-BY-SA-3.0\n| part-of = Mech425\n| organizations = Queen's University\n| keywords = microfinance\n}}\n\n[[Category:Microfinance]]"}