Microenterprise Development

What is a Microenterprise?

A microenterprise is a business with 5 or fewer employees that is small enough or requires initial capital of $35,000 or less— accompanied by business support, training and technical assistance. Most microenterprises are sole proprietorships, which create employment for the owner and, often, other family members. Some grow into larger businesses as well, employing other members of the community.

Microenterprises can be any number of businesses including repair services, cleaning services, specialty foods, jewelry, arts and crafts, gifts, clothing and textiles, computer technology, child care, and environmental products and services. Typical microenterprise loans are $15,000 and under. Most loans are paid back on time and with interest, and the default rate on microloans is often no higher than it is on commercial loans.

What is Microenterprise Development?

Microenterprise development is an economic development strategy that provides services such as training and consulting to new, prospective and experienced small-business owners. Along with this technical assistance, small loans are necessary because traditional financing is difficult to obtain for start-up and developing businesses.

Microenterprise development programs reduce the learning curve and increase the chances of success. These services are usually provided by a community-based nonprofit or agency and are funded through partnerships with government agencies, foundations, private industry and individuals.

Does Microenterprise Development Work?

The Grameen Bank, begun in 1983 by Dr. Muhammad Yunus, serves 38,000 Bangladeshi villages, loans $1.5 million every day, has a 98% repayment rate – AND, turns a profit. These statistics represent real people. Real people full of dreams, hopes and talents. It is the incontrovertible proof that microenterprise development is a feasible strategy for poverty abatement, job creation and self-sufficiency among those that are poor, have no access to credit and no collateral.

Microenterprise development is cost effective, viable and economically sound for all participants, the funder/lending organization, the microloan program, the microentrepreneur and the taxpayer. Truly a win-win situation all around!

How Is Microenterprise Development Measured?

For the Community:

Reduction in welfare, unemployment and other public assistance costs;
Increase in the number of high growth jobs created;
Improvements in the local environment, such as commercial and home occupancy and sales and property tax revenues;
Increase in the diversity and availability of goods and services in new growth markets;
Reduction in default and delinquency rates of new small business loans.

For Individuals and Families:

Reduction in costs and increase in revenues, assets and personal profits;
Improvement in economic self-sufficiency for families;
Increase in new business skills and self-esteem;
Improved relationships with community resources and enhanced credit opportunities.
Family-oriented lifestyles

ROBERT REICH:

THE POLITICAL ROOTS OF WIDENING INEQUALITY

Ultimately, the trend toward widening inequality in America, as elsewhere, can be reversed only if the VAST MAJORITY, WHOSE INCOMES HAVE STAGNATED AND WHOSE WEALTH HAS FAILED TO INCREASE, JOIN TOGETHER to DEMAND FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE.

The MOST IMPORTANT POLITICAL COMPETITION Over the Next Decades WILL NOT BE BETWEEN the RIGHT and LEFT, Or Between REPUBLICANS and DEMOCRATS . .

"IT WILL BE BETWEEN A MAJORITY OF AMERICANS WHO HAVE BEEN LOSING GROUND, AND AN ECONOMIC ELITE THAT REFUSES TO RECOGNIZE OR RESPOND TO IT'S GROWING DISTRESS."

IT’S HAPPENING NOW

“The necessity to harness the potential of quickly advancing new technologies creates a near-constant mandate for innovation in order to stay relevant. Survival is not guaranteed in a world when all is up for reinvention.

There’s no question we’re in a new technological age but how many of us actually understand the vast potential that lies within this new normal?

The biggest impacts of technology on our daily lives is still ahead of us, but already we’re beginning to imagine and navigate how global economies, enterprise businesses and even the human race will adapt to ensure we all thrive.

From a UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME, to understanding the fundamentals of WORKPLACE AUTOMATION and our increasing ability to define the physical future,

THERE’S NO QUESTION THAT DISRUPTION IS HERE.”

– The GIGAOM Change Team

The Next Economy By Andy Stern and Lee Kravitz

Advances in technology are creating the next economy and enabling us to make things/do things/connect with others in smarter, cheaper, faster, more effective ways.

But the price of this progress has been a decoupling of the engine of prosperity from jobs that have been the means by which people have ascended to (and stayed in) the middle class.

Andy Stern, the former president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) spent four years traveling the country and asking economists, futurists, labor leaders, CEOs, investment bankers, entrepreneurs, and political leaders to help picture the U.S. economy 25 to 30 years from now.

He vividly reports on people who are analyzing and creating this new economy.

Through these stories, we come to a stark and deeper understanding of THE TOLL TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS WILL CONTINUE TO TAKE ON JOBS AND INCOME AND ITS INEVITABLE EFFECT ON TENS OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE.

But There is HOPE for our ECONOMY and FUTURE. The Foundation of ECONOMIC PROSPERITY for ALL AMERICANS, Stern believes, is a UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME.

Stern has been a game changer throughout his career, and his next goal is to create a movement that will force the political establishment to take action against something that many on both the right and the left believe is inevitable.

STERN’S PLAN IS BOLD, IDEALISTIC, and CHALLENGING- and IT’S TIME ..

WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM:

CAPITALISM NEEDS URGENT REFORM

REFORMING the very nature of CAPITALISM will be needed to COMBAT THE GROWING APPEAL of POPULIST POLITICAL MOVEMENTS around the WORLD.

Capitalism as we know it needs to be reformed. The GROWING DISCONTENT at the ideology that has created so much wealth and progress on the one hand, and yet so much INEQUALITY and INSTABILITY on the other hand, is causing INCREASINGLY frequent SOCIAL DISRUPTIONS ACROSS the WORLD.

“IT IS NO COINCIDENCE THAT CHALLENGES TO SOCIAL COHESION AND POLICYMAKERS' LEGITIMACY ARE COINCIDING WITH A HIGHLY DISRUPTIVE PHASE OF TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE."

STOP TECHNOLOGY THREAT

Hawking said that technology must be controlled in order to safeguard the future of humanity and believes that a ‘world government’ could be the only way to combat the threat, though warned that that could lead to a global ‘tyranny’.

‘Since civilisation began, aggression has been useful inasmuch as it has definite survival advantages, It is hard-wired into our genes by Darwinian evolution.'

‘Now, however, technology has advanced at such a pace that this aggression may destroy us all by nuclear or biological war. We need to control this inherited instinct by our logic and reason.’

But he added that he believed the ‘THE HUMAN RACE WILL RISE TO MEET THESE CHALLENGES’. He said that the human race must ‘retrain’ for a new world where robots have replaced many everyday jobs.

‘Together, they are a reminder that we are at the most dangerous moment in the development of humanity. We now have the technology to destroy the planet on which we live, but have not yet developed the ability to escape it.’

When asked how the world will end, Hawking said that increasingly, most of the threats humanity faces come from progress in technology.

‘WE ARE NOT GOING TO STOP MAKING PROGRESS, OR REVERSE IT, SO WE MUST RECOGNISE THE DANGERS AND CONTROL THEM.'

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