Our goal is to raise $1 million for micro-development by 2008.
We believe that by using the teach a person to fish philosophy, we can transform peoples lives around the world.
What is micro-development?
Micro-development follows the "teach a person to fish" philosophy that leads to sustainable self-sufficiency.
Micro-development programs and organizations help build the "local human infrastructure" necessary to support positive, long-term economic growth within a community.
Here's a wonderful presentation on what micro-development and micro-finance is.
Micro-development programs focus on sustainable self-sufficiency
in a variety of areas:
- Business development
- Agriculture
- Health care
- Education and literacy
- Vocational skills
- Financial banking and lending systems
- Economic development
- Community infrastructure and development
- Peace-keeping
The Revolution begins with business owners just like you, who have access to the internet and phone line, and then take the time to discover the tools for business profitability and sustainability. As the tools are put into use, your business prospers, allowing more than enough to feed you and your family, and have plenty leftover to freely give back.
The WorldChangingBusiness model offers a new paradigm where profitable businesses grow and expand as a direct function of their ability to serve the world around them. As you generate prosperity for yourself, you'll be in a position to share your abundance with others and we'll show you how that can make a big difference for business growth.
There is a direct connection between consistently giving back and consistent, sustainable growth.
Our intention is to help businesses create overflowing abundance to share with others.
What would $1 Million do?
In short -- a lot.
For every $40 given, that's one mother in Africa who can learn to build a sustainable business to feed her family. With $1 million, that's 25,000 mothers who can become prosperous contributors to their local economies. That's 25,000 families making it out of poverty and building a brighter future for generations to come.
How will we get to $1 million?
To arrive at our $1 million goal, we are using a three-pronged approach:
- In 2006, we are kicking-off the $1 Million Initiative by holding the first WorldChangingBusiness TeleSummit, whereby we've teamed up with a host of experts who have made giving a part of their business model. We are giving 20% of all ticket sales and 90% of contributions from corporate sponsors to micro-development.
- From all other WorldChangingBusiness programs and services, we are committed to giving 10% of our quarterly profits to micro-development.
- We invite you and business owners like you to play a part in giving something. If just 1,000 business owners gave $50 per month, we would reach our goal of giving $1 million in less than 2 years.
How can you get involved?
If you make giving a part of your regular business practices, you will spur your own business success and produce a domino affect that brings sustainable prosperity to families and communities all around the planet.
While financial giving is one way to give, giving of your time or resources is also valuable.
To be a spark to light the world, you don't need to give much. Just give something. Time, money, resources, something. And let it be something you give regularly and consistently, so it truly is sustainable.
Examples of giving:
- Give a monthly donation to one of the micro-development organizations we support
- Give a monthly donation to another organization of your choice that supports micro-development
- Give your time to helping others "learn to fish for themselves"
- When you host an event, give scholarships to a certain number of participants who are unable to afford tuition
- Volunteer your time with any organization that is helping children or adults learn to sustain themselves
- Write an article on behalf of micro-development or self-sustainability
- Give a certain percentage of business profits to micro-development
- Give a certain dollar amount to micro-development, for certain products or services sold
To participate in the $1 Million Initiative, sign up in the box below. There are no requirements or obligations whatsoever to get involved. Sign up to find out how you can be a part of a movement to help thousands of families.
What organizations do we support?
A.S.A.P. - A Self-Help Assistance Program
www.asapafrica.org
A Self-help Assistance Program's (ASAP's) mission is to cultivate self reliance in
Southern Africa. ASAP works in partnership with rural communities in Southern Africa to
help people improve their own lives, by providing micro-finance, vocational skills &
education improvement.
Over 9,000 rural women enjoy increased income and better living standard through
participating in ASAP's rural savings club project - "Kufusa Mari" in rural Zimbabwe. To
help alleviate suffering of people living with HIV/AIDS, ASAP has trained and supports over
3,000 AIDS affected households by establishing nutritional gardens, including the
cultivation and use of medicinal herbs. ASAP provided teachers at 110 schools with basic
teaching supplies like notebooks, pens and chalk, which many schools can no longer afford.
ASAP provided school fees for 9,783 orphan and needy children, to ensure that all children
are enrolled in school and receive education.
ACCION International
www.accion.org
By providing "micro" loans and business training to impoverished women and men who start
their own businesses, ACCION's microlending partners help people work their own way up the
economic ladder, with dignity and pride. ACCION seeks to bring this opportunity to the
world's 3 billion poor by developing microfinance institutions that are financially
self-sustaining and together capable of assisting millions of people.
One of the pioneers of microlending, ACCION International is a private nonprofit
organization with 30 years of expertise in the field. Since 1973, ACCION and its network of
partners have worked to reduce unemployment and poverty throughout Latin America and Africa
by providing microloans--small, short-term loans to the self-employed poor. Microloans,
along with business training, provide the tools these micro-entrepreneurs need to pull
themselves out of poverty - to make enough money to feed the family, send a child to school
instead of to work, and even employ a neighbor. ACCION's clientele-cobblers, street
vendors, seamstresses and taxi drivers - traditionally considered "bad credit risks" by
traditional banks, have proven to be quite the contrary.
ACCION's partners currently operate in 20 countries in Latin America and Africa, and in
over 30 cities in the U.S. Over the last decade, the ACCION Network has:
- provided $5.8 billion in loans averaging $600 each
- assisted 3.2 million micro-entrepreneurs, 65% of whom are women
Concern Worldwide US, Inc.
www.concernusa.org
Concern Worldwide was founded in 1968 in Ireland and directs its resources towards
people who live in extreme or absolute poverty. The organization's priorities are emergency
response in developing countries and supporting long-term operations that benefit the
poorest communities around the world. Concern bases it work on the principle that
development is a process which occurs in people, proceeds at their pace, and is achieved,
not given.
Concern dispense emergency aid such as food, medicine, shelter materials. They assist
with renovating and rebuilding houses, schools, hospitals, water and sanitation systems.
They provide health and nutritional care, seeds, livestock, tools, and micro-credit
programs. Concern sponsors development programs, sending resources and experienced
volunteers to provide disaster relief and long-term self-help programs in education,
health, engineering, agriculture, community development.
Concern Worldwide currently has over 150 international personnel and 2,500 local staff
operating in 29 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as
Kosovo and East Timor.
Currently, Concern is providing disaster relief in the tsunami-affected areas of India,
Indonesia and Sri Lanka. They are addressing both immediate and longer term rehabilitation
needs. Concern continues to respond to the humanitarian crises in Afghanistan and Darfur,
Sudan. Concern is responsible for food distributions to local populations as well as shelter
packages including tents, blankets and cooking sets. Plans for longer term programs include
food security, rural infrastructure development and drought management.
Village Earth
www.villageearth.org
Village Earth's mission is to achieve sustainable village-based development by
connecting communities with global resources through training, consultation, and
networking.
Village Earth's approach is founded on the premise that lack of access to resources is
the primary obstacle to building a better life, and that poverty is the symptom rather than
cause of the problem. Villagers possess the resources for their own development, they just
need to be guided and taught how to access and use those resources.
Unlike traditional methods, a bottom-up approach to development is advocated-- listening
rather than dictating and facilitating access to resources-- including financial, social,
energy, information, and hard and soft appropriate technologies. Village Earth also
advocates organizing villages/communities into clusters, creating a larger population,
otherwise called Resource Access Units (RAUs).
Much like U.S. counties and Chinese communes, the RAUs centralize, basically creating a
larger population of 25-40 villages and 35,000-50,000 people, which allows easier
mobilization and a collective use of resources making it more efficient to tap the
resources and sustain development. The RAUs follow a five-phase, five- to 10-year path to
self-reliance with the assistance of the CSVBD and other non-governmental organizations.
They have had impressive success with their model, and they are capable of replicating
their success, continually spawning new self-sustaining RAUs.
Count Me In For Women's Economic Independence, Inc.
www.count-me-in.org
Count Me In champions women's economic independence by providing access to business
loans, consultation and education. Count Me In is dedicated to increasing women's access to
credit and capital by making systemic changes in credit scoring and small business lending.
The first online micro-lender, Count Me In uses a unique women friendly credit scoring
system to make business loans available to women across the United States. Women gain
access to networks that expand markets, skills and confidence at www.count-me-in.org
Count Me In made over 500 loans from applicants in 50 states; launched BizLine with
48-hour response time to women's business questions; and developed a customized and
innovative credit scoring system that understands the lives and needs of women in
business.
Enterprise Mentors International
www.enterprise-mentors.org
The mission of Enterprise Mentors International (EMI) is to assist families struggling
for self sufficiency to attain self-reliant livelihood by providing training, character
development, counseling, mentoring and small loans. In developed countries EMI's mission is
to provide those having the means and desire to assist the impoverished with proven and
practical methods of self-help to extend, not handouts, but a handup.
EMI establishes affiliated, operating foundations in selected host countries, each with
its own local Board of Directors and indigenous staff, and makes funding available to
assist in start-up and operations for up to five years. These foundations then work at
training, mentoring and offering small loans to industrious but impoverished entrepreneurs
who are struggling to support themselves and their families.
EMI's seven partner foundations in Guatemala, Mexico, El Salvador, the Philippines and
Peru offer basic business training, personalized consulting, mentoring and small loans to
those who have the desire to improve their family's standard of living through
entrepreneurship and self-employment. "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach
him to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." --Lao Tzu Enterprise Mentors adds: "Motivate
him to teach others to fish and you feed a nation."
Green Empowerment
www.greenempowerment.org
Green Empowerment provides developing communities with financial, organizational, and
technical resources to build, maintain, and own green energy systems. Community
electrification creates jobs and social advance: small home industry, agri-business
(rice-hullers, corn-grinders, or coffee-huskers), night-time adult literacy classes, light
for students to study, radios to be in touch with the wider world, and refrigeration for
medicines at the local clinic. Sustaining renewable energy systems requires the community
to protect the local forest, streams, and watershed. Environmentalism becomes part of
self-interest. Success is measured one community at a time by the improvement in
villager's lives and the protection of their environment.
Green Empowerment supports the use of micro-hydro, biomass, and wind and solar renewable
energy to promote economic development in an environmentally safe manner.
Green Empowerment is an international organization that promotes community-based
renewable energy projects and watershed preservation plans to generate social and
environmental progress.
Green Empowerment currently is working on projects in Nicaragua, Guatemala, Ecuador,
Borneo (Malaysia), the Philippines, and the Thai/Burma border. They are coordinating with
The Borneo Project, the Ben Linder Memorial Fund, and EnerGreen Foundation (Canada), and
partner NGOs, ATDER-BL (Association of Rural Development Workers- Benjamin Linder in
Nicaragua), SAM (Friends of the Earth Malaysia), PACOS (Partners of Community
Organizations), and YAMOG (Morning Dew, a Philippines NGO based in Mindanao), Fundacion
Natura (in Ecuador), and Palangi Thai and the Karen People's Welfare Department on the
Thai/Burma border.
In Nicaragua, Green Empowerment has supported three community hydro systems, which bring
electricity to several thousand villagers; Hurricane Mitch relief; a biomass facility that
will quadruple income for 350 small rice producers; several watershed projects that have
resulted in 200,000 replanted trees and purchase of 1100 acres of critical primary
rainforest habitat for community ownership.
In Borneo, they are working with PACOS in Long Lawen to complete the first community
micro-hydro system on the island.
In the Philippines, they are cooperating with YAMOG on several community projects
serving hundreds of families in Mindanao.
In Ecuador, they have worked on a demonstration project installing solar power for
turtle conservation programs and on projects with the indigenous Shuar people in the Amazon
to bring them electricity through solar power.
On the Thai/Burma border, they have trained medics to install and operate solar
photovoltaic systems for Burmese refugee clinics which serve up to 50,000 people
annually.
Imaginenations Group
www.imaginenations.org
ImagineNations' mission is to mobilize young people around the world to envision for
themselves and their country a better life. ImagineNations seeks to inform and influence
policy and program development, particularly those related to achieving the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs) by serving as a catalyst, broker of relationships and an
advocate.
The ImagineNations' Group is a global alliance of social entrepreneurs, investors,
financial institutions, corporations and media working together with young people to
inspire positive change in society.
ImagineNations works in four areas: Investment Strategies for Youth Employment; Media;
Action Research; and Seeing is Believing.
All four areas interconnect and all are directed toward one objective: increasing
investment and priority given to youth employment and livelihood.
ImagineNations' youth investment strategy provides a framework to significantly expand
the opportunities for millions of young adults, especially adolescent girls and young
women, to gain access to employment and livelihood through various incentives, business
coaching and/or capital for their entrepreneurial ideas. They seek to create easily
accessible networks of "access points" for opportunities -- internships, apprenticeships,
jobs, loan guarantees, capital and coaching -- for young people, ages 15-29, to create
their own micro and small enterprises, and loans and equity investments for helping to grow
small and medium-sized enterprises in ways that result in greater opportunities for young
people.
The Seeing is Believing trips are designed specifically to engage prospective investors
and donors in support of youth employment efforts for young entrepreneurs. The trips are
being made only to countries where the youth investment strategy is being employed. Zambia
is the first test case (with excellent practical results!). To date, ImagineNations has
taken four trips to Zambia. The Nike Foundation and the Center for Corporate Citizenship at
Boston College are primary partners in this initiative.
Similarly, action research is focused primarily on youth employment as a means of
mobilizing awareness for the youth investment strategy. A practical example is shown in the
2005 survey in conjunction with partners Amr Khaled and the Right Start Foundation
International, querying more than one million young people across the Middle East about
their ideas on entrepreneurship, employment, jobs and their future.
The media strategy, the smallest of our efforts, is also focused going forward on the
subject of youth employment and entrepreneurship. They use media to engage young people in
talking about their ideas, their obstacles and their hope for entrepreneurial
opportunities.
In late August 2005, ImagineNations also participated as a partner at a one-day
conference sponsored by Khaled's Foundation at Wembley Conference Centre in London. The
theme of the conference was building bridges with the West, and a central theme was youth
and employment. All of these strategies, when taken as a whole, combine to create a
powerful set of tools that drive change -- in attitudes, in policies and in the investment
climate.
Oxfam-America
www.oxfamamerica.org
The mission of Oxfam-America is to develop lasting solutions to poverty, hunger, and
social injustice.
Oxfam develops lasting solutions to poverty, hunger, and injustice by helping people
help themselves and by advocating for policies to eliminate the root causes of poverty.
Currently, Oxfam is helping local groups provide relief to the poorest communities affected
by Hurricane Katrina and will provide to similarly affected communities struck by Hurricane
Rita. Oxfam will draw from our Global Emergencies Fund to send supplies and additional
support to areas affected by the Pakistan region earthquake.
Oxfam provides support in the following ways:
- Regional Programs: Oxfam works with local organizations, providing funds and
empowering poor people to play a central role in the development of their families,
communities, and regions.
- Policy & Advocacy: Oxfam combines research, advocacy, and campaigning to engage
world public opinion and influence decision makers on behalf of people living in
poverty.
- Public Education: Oxfam fosters a broad understanding of the root causes of poverty
and injustice and promotes the role each individual can play in a global movement for
social change.
- Humanitarian Relief & Rehabilitation: Oxfam provides immediate assistance to save
lives in the event of a disaster. Once urgent danger passes, Oxfam continues to help
people restore their livelihoods and prepare for future crises.
