Frequently Asked Questions
What is PovertyFighters.com?Povertyfighters.com is working to provide practical help to the world’s poorest families – particularly the women of those families. It helps Microfinance Institutions work together to raise funds, while strengthening public awareness and support for microcredit.
How does the website work?When you enter the PovertyFighters.com website, you are invited to click on the ‘donate’ button. This is completely FREE to the user, however a simple click means that sponsors will donate 25cents in loan credit to those in need. Every day, by simply clicking on this button and entering the site you can make a difference for someone in need.
What happens when I click on the "Donate" button? Does the donation cost me anything?There is absolutely no charge to you for the donation; it is fully paid for by the sponsors.
When you click on the "Donate" button, the computer adds your donation to the day's totals and shows you the banners of the companies sponsoring your donation. These companies deposit funds in a loan-pool that benefits participating PovertyFighters.com microcredit banks.
Who can participate? And how?Anyone can participate and there are simple ways to do so:
Anyone can visit www.povertyfighters.com and a donation will be made to a needy family overseas.
Kids too can make a donation by visiting www.writingourworld.com and submitting a story or poem.
Anyone can visit writingourworld.com and read all the stories and poems we receive from kids all around the world.
Schools, venues, and organizations can participate by contacting Child’s Play to book workshops, residencies, and performances for the WOW! program.
Teachers may wish to integrate this practical experience in global awareness into their curriculums.
What is microcredit?Microcredit is a banking service for poor people who want to work. With little or no collateral, a poor person can borrow $25 to $5,000 to open a little business, or to make a business they already have more profitable. Some of these "micro-enterprises" are as simple as selling fruit on a street corner. Many, such as tiny stores and cottage industries, are run out of the borrowers’ homes. Some are small manufacturing shops. Twenty million very poor "micro-entrepreneurs" world-wide currently access $4 billion in credit. These numbers have doubled in the past 3 years, as microlenders have striven to attain the goal they set for themselves at the 1997 Microcredit Summit:
“To ensure that 100 million of the world's poorest families, especially the women of those families, are receiving credit for self-employment and other financial and business services by 2005.”
Do microcredit borrowers repay their loans?Yes! The repayment rate on microcredit loans averages about 95%
Why don’t microcredit banks just give away the money?Most people who are able to work are not looking for handouts. They want the dignity of taking care of their families. Microcredit offers them the chance they need to work their way out of poverty with dignity.
Do borrowers pay interest on microcredit loans?Yes. Usually they pay market-rate interest -- the same rates charged by local commercial bank
Why is interest charged?The microcredit bank's interest income is used to pay the bank's operating costs. For example, Josefina in Bogota, Colombia, repays her loan of $50 plus $5 interest. The $50 is loaned to another poor entrepreneur in Bogota. The $5 is used for the microcredit bank’s staff salaries and office expenses.
If more interest is earned than is needed to pay the bank's operating expenses, it is immediately loaned to another qualified borrower.
Because microfinance institutions are self-sustaining, microcredit has been hailed by the United Nations as one of the great hopes for eliminating world poverty by 2050.
Is PovertyFighters.com directly allied with the Microcredit Summit Campaign?Yes. PovertyFighters.com remits a percentage of income directly to help underwrite the Microcredit Summit Campaign’s operations, and also relies on the expertise of the campaign’s leadership to supervise funds distribution.
Why are PovertyFighters.com’s sponsors willing to provide microcredit loans?Our sponsors are socially responsibile companies. By providing microcredit loans to help the poor help themselves, our sponsors hope to generate good will among PovertyFighters.com users like you. Please encourage their good works by becoming their customers!
Have the entrepreneurs featured on PovertyFighters.com all received loans directly from PovertyFighters.com?No, they have received loans from PovertyFighters.com's microlending partners, including Opportunity International, Grameen Foundation, SHARE and INDCARE. Sponsors of PovertyFighters.com provide loan funds to these partners -- who then pass the loans on to the entrepreneurs.
How often can I make a free donation?Site visitors may use the click to donate button twice each day on the home-page.
Can I just keep clicking on the "Donate" button and make a hundred donations every day?Our sponsor agreement permits us to count two donations from you each calendar day. A monitoring system is set up to check this. So while you could click on the button a hundred times, this would only count as two donations.
When does the new calendar day start?The new calendar day starts at midnight Los Angeles local time (PST or PDT depending on the time of the year).
How much funding is loaned per visitor-click?Depending on our relationship with each sponsor, every valid click-to-donate on PovertyFighters results in that sponsor depositing between 1/2 cent and 5 cents in either a permanent Calvert Foundation GiftShare account, or in a refundable Calvert Foundation Community Investment Note.
Calvert Foundation loans funds to Microlenders for 3 year terms, on average. The Microlenders themselves make average 6-month loans to their clients -- the poor women and their families. So that means that the funds provided by PovertyFighters' sponsors, in a 36-month period, will be used for up to 6 actual microloans (6-microloans x 6-month loan-term = 36 months Calvert Loan to Microlender).
So, just 5 cents of sponsor-deposit per valid click-to-donate on PovertyFighters generates up to 30 cents in loan funds over the course of the 3-year Calvert Foundation loan to the Microlender.
That’s why we say that each click generates 25 cents in loans -- although actually it may be generating much more, depending on how many sponsors we have each day.
Can I make a donation directly to PovertyFighters.com?No. We encourage you to donate directly to any of the outstanding microlenders on this list.
Can we put a link from our own site to PovertyFighters.com?Yes, anyone may feel free to link to PovertyFighters.com. If you'd like, use one of our buttons. Send emails requesting link exchanges to sean@povertyfighters.com.
You are also welcome to point to PovertyFighters.com in the signature block of your outgoing messages.
How can I help PovertyFighters.com find sponsors?We appreciate your help in finding sponsors. The more sponsors we have, the more money all our supporters will be able to lend each time that they click on the "Donate" button. If you have sponsorship suggestions, please email them to andy@povertyfighters.com.
Is PovertyFighters.com a nonprofit organization?PovertyFighters.com itself is structured as a for-profit corporation, not as a non-profit charity, although our close allies Microcredit Summit Campaign and Calvert Foundation are both non-profits, and these partners are integral to our functioning.
We have selected a for-profit structure because non-profit charities must demonstrate to the government that they generate at least 30% of their operating revenue in the form of contributions from the general public. PovertyFighters.com does not wish to compete against microlenders for donations from the public -- so, with no public donations, we cannot be structured as a non-profit charity.
For more information please visit the page About PovertyFighters.
What is PovertyFighters.com’s spam policy?Please do not send unsolicited messages or email-postcards promoting PovertyFighters.com to anyone you do not know, or post information about PovertyFighters.com inappropriately to newsgroups or in other places on the internet. Anything people regard as unsolicited spam from PovertyFighters.com may alienate those who might otherwise support microcredit.
What is PovertyFighters.com’s privacy policy?PovertyFighters.com deeply respects the privacy of its visitors. You are not required to provide any personal information to visit the site and lend to microcredit. We do examine the IP addresses of our visitors -- which contain no personal information -- to ensure that no one computer is somehow avoiding our 2-clicks-per-day limit. However we make no further use of thise IP addresses. If you write us an email, we will assume that you want to receive our occasional email newsletters in the future, but we will never share your email address with anyone (and you can always send an email asking to unsubscribe from the newsletter).
Visitors to PovertyFighters.com who join an Oxfam Collegiate Click-Drive Team must accept a "cookie" on their computer to have their clicks counted towards their college's total. But we share no visitor information with any outside companies or organizations.
How can I contact PovertyFighters.com?Send emails to alaties@aol.com.
Our address is:
PovertyFighters.com
c/o Andy Laties
161 Pondview Drive
Amherst, Massachusetts 01002
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