Microfinance: Giving Credit to the Entrepreneurial poor

chillibreeze writer — Joey Bermudez

F. Scott Fitzgerald said: “The very rich are different from you and me.” To which one might add: “But the very poor are even more different from you and me.”

In the Third World context, the poorest of the poor are not exemplified by Joe the Plumber who charges US$40 per hour on a house call. The better example is Jamal Malik of the Oscar Best Picture fame, “The Slumdog Millionaire”, whose daily brush with desperation made him clutch at straws, whatever straws. In the world of the very poor, the only two choices are to give way to the back-breaking weight of one’s ugly circumstances and accept defeat or to stare down the odds and break with destiny. It is easy to say that the choice is a no-brainer, especially when one’s encounter with poverty is limited to romanticizing it from a safe distance. But those among us who were poor at one time or another know only too well that poverty’s suffocating tentacles make surrender a tempting choice. For this reason, the courageous poor who strive to hoist themselves out of their unjust conditions deserve more accolade than we give to the successful wealthy.

In recent history, the courageous poor in many parts of the world have decisively taken their fate unto their own hands. Betrayed by a society that cannot create enough decent jobs and armed only with a newly-regained dignity, the courageous poor have produced and perfected a brand of social entrepreneurship that the individualistic wealthy will probably find difficult to emulate. And with this new brand of entrepreneurship came along an innovative form of self-help called microfinance, the dynamics of which continue to befuddle the traditional bankers whose notions of risk and return have continually failed them cycle after cycle.

We can waste all our time pinning our hopes on “trickle down” economics but the truth is that we cannot achieve sustainable growth until we enable the poor to become active agents of “bottom up” growth. The wealthy have a lot to learn from the entrepreneurial poor who drive and inspire entrepreneurial communities with their zeal, hard work and unique brand of risk-taking. That life has gone on despite the global crisis brought upon us by the irresponsible financial behemoths in Wall Street is a credit to the many unnoticed micro-businessmen whose entrepreneurial feats have kept the wheels of the economy turning. Their tribe must increase even as the ranks of the greedy corporate types must diminish. For obvious reasons, I will always feel safer with the entrepreneurial poor than with the corporate chieftains who live by the tenet that their companies are too big to fail and must be bailed out with taxpayers’ money when they mess up real bad. Yes, the poor are truly different from you and me.

Chillibreeze's disclaimer: This is a contributed article and was published on Chillibreeze in November, 2009. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the views of Chillibreeze as a company. Chillibreeze has a strict anti-plagiarism policy. Please contact us to report any copyright issues related to this article. The relevance of the facts and figures cited (if any) could change after a period of time.

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Joey makes a living as a banker but he feeds his soul as a writer. To him, writing is the highest expression of freedom. Family and loyal friends are to live for while writing one's innermost thoughts is to die for.

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