Member Article

Micro-financing scheme to help entrepreneurs worldwide

Kiva and Metro Design Consultants are teaming up to launch a lending fund in August, with the aim of benefiting entrepreneurs worldwide.

The micro lending scheme will be headed by Metro managing director, Daniel Taylor, who will work with Kiva, the global micro-finance non-profit organisation.

The fund will be launched on August 5, to coincide with Jamaican Independence day, which Mr Taylor said would be fitting as many Jamaicans, like his father, who arrived in the UK in the early 1940s and 1950s would have benefited from similar micro lending schemes called pardners.

Mr Taylor and Metro Design Management will be looking to become ambassadors for Kiva over the next 12 months, and intend to hold a series of events to raise funds and awareness with the view of eliminating poverty in the developing world.

He said: “I’m delighted to be partnering with Kiva, many of the funding categories within the Kiva Organisation are areas of great interest to me personally, agriculture construction and youth entrepreneurship.”

Since Kiva’s inception in 2005 the organisation has loaned over $325m, in over 61 different countries.

The borrowing structure of Kiva often means that as little as $25 can impact lives; whether it is loan to buy a new cement machine for a family business in Kosovo, or an El Salvador farmer who needs to borrow money for fertiliser and insecticides.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .