Announcing the YouthLINC Micro-enterprise Pilot Program
Mission Statement
The mission of the YouthLINC Micro-enterprise Pilot Program is to assist families at our international sites that struggle for self-sufficiency. Part of this assistance is small enterprise activities and small loans.
YouthLINC will also provide training, mentoring, counseling and loan capital to individuals in need in underdeveloped countries where we serve. We will offer educational assistance by providing business skills training through Utah YouthLINC students, alums, and volunteer mentors.
We will unleash the human potential in these communities and in our volunteers by extending a hand up, not a hand out, and by helping create sustainable businesses that will continue to benefit loan recipients for years to come.
Action Plan
In the 2006-2007 program year, YouthLINC students worked to research and develop a Micro-credit program, which was implemented during the 2007 international service trips to Mexico and Kenya. Under the mentorship of professionals, YouthLINC youth established the vision and put together a comprehensive pilot plan to help people sustain themselves.
Locally, students have worked with other micro-credit organizations to understand the complexities of starting this project. The micro-credit committee has come up with a structure combining loans and business lessons to be taught to loan recipients, and is working with YouthLINC's international Rotarian coordinators to ensure recipients will continue to receive support after the YouthLINC teams leave.
Kenya
In Kenya, students worked with a women's cooperative who want to 'add value to their farm products' by drying, packaging, and selling banana chips, and by making simple bread and cake mixes. This cooperative has written a business proposal for food dryers and mills, and this proposal is part of a Rotary International Matching Grant, sponsored by Rotary Clubs of Holladay, American Fork, Ogden, Utah, the Rotary Club of Middleton, England, and the Rotary Club of Meru, Kenya.
The group taught business lessons to other groups of women in the community of Nkubu, Kenya. There may be potential for University partnerships in Meru that would include Kenyan students administrating business lessons and helping to track and mentor new businesses.
Mexico
Our Rotarian friends of Ocotlan arranged a meeting with El Grupo Puente (GP), a group of women dedicated to the progress of impoverished women in La Primavera, a slum where people live in whatever they can find. We decided that, due to the GP's history with impoverished women from the area and their ability to work with both YouthLINC and the women of La Primavera, we could create a mutually beneficial partnership.
The GP provided us with a detailed list of costs for sewing machines and other materials that they would use to teach the women. They also gave us a projection for the coming year, listing goals and lessons they would be teaching. If the program works as planned the women of La Primavera should be prepared to receive loans for their own sewing machines in one year.
2007-2008 Microenterprise Committee Goals
Students who are interested in participating with the Microenterprise committee will help research partnerships with other in-country persons/organizations. Students will help insure early and often communication with our in-country coordinators to get actual case studies so that we can compare to existing literature and develop business lessons that address specific needs.
These case studies can also be used in grant-writing, presentations to potential donors, etc. Fundraising, monitoring existing contracts, solidifying partnerships, promotion, and improving our business lessons will be major focuses this year.
As the YouthLINC students travel tour international sites to implement this program, they are educated about pervasive poverty in developing countries and will see that on a small scale it is being alleviated by using the principles of self-help and micro-credit.
This is a unique opportunity for students to take a leadership role, gain information and insight both about the causes of poverty and a proven method to alleviate poverty.
The format of the YouthLINC Micro-enterprise Pilot Program is in keeping with our commitment to create life-time humanitarians by empowering young people to make a difference.
Contact
YouthLINC welcomes the aid of all professionals, alums, and current students in this Pilot Program. Please contact Sabrina at sabrina@youthlinc.org for more information.
YouthLINC wants to thank the Smoot Family for their generous donation which has made our Micro-enterprise Program possible.