We are pleased to announce our Spring 2013 Investment Decisions!
MLO Humo: http://www.kiva.org/partners/63
With a focus on rural development and infrastructure as well as a new geographic location for Impact Fund in Tajikistan, MLO Humo received $2000 of the $3000 the board invested this semester.
Check out a sample borrower here: http://www.kiva.org/lend/543164
Fundacion Paraguaya: http://www.kiva.org/partners/58
Focusing on entrepreneurial education and small business growth, Fundacion Paraguaya received $1000 of the board's $3000 this semester.
Check out a sample borrower here: http://www.kiva.org/lend/545938
Congratulations to all board members who participated!
Friday, April 12, 2013
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Now Accpeting Applications for the Spring 2013 Investment Board!
Oxy Impact Fund is now accepting
applications for the Spring 2013 Investment Board. Members of the board
will work with other students to invest $3000 in NGO's throughout
the developing world. The board will invest this money in microfinance
institutions or other such organizations to have an impact on global
issues such as women's empowerment, environmental conservation, and
economic development.
The board will meet every Sunday at 6:30 PM for five-six weeks starting Sunday Feb. 24th and finishing well before finals. Meetings will be approximately one hour and all meetings are mandatory. If you are available at this time please apply.
- What is Impact Fund?:
- The Occidental Impact Fund, established by students, for students, allows us to directly target and impact global issues that matter to us. Our mission: to research, advocate, and participate in sustainable and socially responsible investing to create positive global change. (See some of our past work at http://www.oxyif.blogspot.com/)
What will you do?:
Work with 16-20 other students to directly impact a global issues that matters to you. This process will be broken into three stages:
1. Select an issue that you want to impact
2. Identify a microfinance institution that directly or indirectly addresses that issue
3. Work with our other board members to fund your organization.
Your application must include the following in this order:
Name
Major (potential or declared)
Class year
What skills and knowledge will you bring as an Oxy Impact Fund board member?
In 5-10 sentences, discuss a particular world issue that you find important and/or interesting (Example: financial inclusion among women in India).
Are you interested in being involved in research (separate from board)? Y/N
Please email completed applications, attached as word documents, to mlang@oxy.edu by midnight on Feb. 19.
The board will meet every Sunday at 6:30 PM for five-six weeks starting Sunday Feb. 24th and finishing well before finals. Meetings will be approximately one hour and all meetings are mandatory. If you are available at this time please apply.
- What is Impact Fund?:
- The Occidental Impact Fund, established by students, for students, allows us to directly target and impact global issues that matter to us. Our mission: to research, advocate, and participate in sustainable and socially responsible investing to create positive global change. (See some of our past work at http://www.oxyif.blogspot.com/)
What will you do?:
Work with 16-20 other students to directly impact a global issues that matters to you. This process will be broken into three stages:
1. Select an issue that you want to impact
2. Identify a microfinance institution that directly or indirectly addresses that issue
3. Work with our other board members to fund your organization.
Your application must include the following in this order:
Name
Major (potential or declared)
Class year
What skills and knowledge will you bring as an Oxy Impact Fund board member?
In 5-10 sentences, discuss a particular world issue that you find important and/or interesting (Example: financial inclusion among women in India).
Are you interested in being involved in research (separate from board)? Y/N
Please email completed applications, attached as word documents, to mlang@oxy.edu by midnight on Feb. 19.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Now Accepting Applications for Fall 2012 Investment Board
Oxy Impact Fund is now accepting applications for the Fall 2012 Investment Board. Members of the board will work with other students to invest $3000 in NGO's throughout the developing world. The board will invest this money in microfinance institutions or other such organizations to have an impact on global issues such as women's empowerment, environmental conservation, and economic development.
The board will meet every Sunday at 8:30 PM for five-six weeks starting Sunday Sep. 30th and finishing well before finals. Meetings will be approximately one hour and all meetings are mandatory. If you are available at this time please apply.
- What is Impact Fund?:
- The Occidental Impact Fund, established by students, for students, allows us to directly target and impact global issues that matter to us. Our mission: to research, advocate, and participate in sustainable and socially responsible investing to create positive global change. (See some of our past work at http://www.oxyif.blogspot.com/)
What will you do?:
Work with 16-20 other students to directly impact a global issues that matters to you. This process will be broken into three stages:
1. Select an issue that you want to impact
2. Identify a microfinance institution that directly or indirectly addresses that issue
3. Work with our other board members to fund your organization.
Your application must include the following in this order:
Name
Major (potential or declared)
Class year
What skills and knowledge will you bring as an Oxy Impact Fund board member?
In 5-10 sentences, discuss a particular world issue that you find important and/or interesting (Example: financial inclusion among women in India).
Are you interested in being involved in research (separate from board)? Y/N
Please email completed applications, attached as word documents, to mlang@oxy.edu by midnight on September 19.
The board will meet every Sunday at 8:30 PM for five-six weeks starting Sunday Sep. 30th and finishing well before finals. Meetings will be approximately one hour and all meetings are mandatory. If you are available at this time please apply.
- What is Impact Fund?:
- The Occidental Impact Fund, established by students, for students, allows us to directly target and impact global issues that matter to us. Our mission: to research, advocate, and participate in sustainable and socially responsible investing to create positive global change. (See some of our past work at http://www.oxyif.blogspot.com/)
What will you do?:
Work with 16-20 other students to directly impact a global issues that matters to you. This process will be broken into three stages:
1. Select an issue that you want to impact
2. Identify a microfinance institution that directly or indirectly addresses that issue
3. Work with our other board members to fund your organization.
Your application must include the following in this order:
Name
Major (potential or declared)
Class year
What skills and knowledge will you bring as an Oxy Impact Fund board member?
In 5-10 sentences, discuss a particular world issue that you find important and/or interesting (Example: financial inclusion among women in India).
Are you interested in being involved in research (separate from board)? Y/N
Please email completed applications, attached as word documents, to mlang@oxy.edu by midnight on September 19.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Investment Decisions Fall 2011
$1500- Shared Interest
Shared Interest works as a catalyst for social and economic change in South Africa. Since our inception in 1994, we have used loan guarantees to bridge the gap between South African banks and marginalized people, previously considered “unbankable” during apartheid.
As a 501(c)3 non-profit social investment fund, we raise capital in the U.S. from individuals, foundations and financial institutions to support micro-lending, agricultural cooperatives and small businesses in South Africa. Along with our South African partner, Thembani International Guarantee Fund, we have helped make the promise of economic human rights a reality for over one million South Africans.
$1500- INSOTEC
We work hard to ensure that we are reaching those left out of Ecuador's traditional banking system and our numbers prove it. 45% of our borrowers are women and 30% are indigenous. INSOTEC is currently undertaking a strategy of expanding further into rural and remote areas with half the portfolio dedicated to agriculture and livestock, and the remaining across commerce, services, and manufacturing.
Shared Interest works as a catalyst for social and economic change in South Africa. Since our inception in 1994, we have used loan guarantees to bridge the gap between South African banks and marginalized people, previously considered “unbankable” during apartheid.
As a 501(c)3 non-profit social investment fund, we raise capital in the U.S. from individuals, foundations and financial institutions to support micro-lending, agricultural cooperatives and small businesses in South Africa. Along with our South African partner, Thembani International Guarantee Fund, we have helped make the promise of economic human rights a reality for over one million South Africans.
$1500- INSOTEC
We work hard to ensure that we are reaching those left out of Ecuador's traditional banking system and our numbers prove it. 45% of our borrowers are women and 30% are indigenous. INSOTEC is currently undertaking a strategy of expanding further into rural and remote areas with half the portfolio dedicated to agriculture and livestock, and the remaining across commerce, services, and manufacturing.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Now Accepting Applications for Fall 2011
Oxy Impact Fund is now accepting applications for the Spring 2011 Investment Board. Members of the board will work with 16 other students to invest $3000 in NGO's throughout the developing world. The board will invest this money in microfinance institutions or other such organizations to have an impact on global issues such as women's empowerment, environmental conservation, and economic development. Again, we will mostly be relying on Microplace (https://www.microplace.com/cause/understanding_microfinance), but will also potentially be vetting other opportunities outside its focus.
The board will meet every Wednesday at 8:45 PM for five-six weeks starting Wedneday October 5th and finishing well before finals. Meetings will be approximately one hour and all meetings are mandatory. If you are available at this time please apply.
- What is Impact Fund?:
- The Occidental Impact Fund, established by students, for students, allows us to directly target and impact global issues that matter to us. Our mission: to research, advocate, and participate in sustainable and socially responsible investing to create positive global change. (See some of our past work at http://www.oxyif.blogspot.com/)
What will you do?:
Work with 16 other students to directly impact a global issues that matters to you. This process will be broken into three stages:
1. Select an issue that you want to impact
2. Identify a microfinance institution that directly or indirectly addresses that issue
3. Work with our other board members to fund your organization.
To get a copy of the application or if you have any questions, email oxyimpactfund@gmail.com. Please email completed applications to oxyimpactfund@gmail.com by midnight on September 25.
The board will meet every Wednesday at 8:45 PM for five-six weeks starting Wedneday October 5th and finishing well before finals. Meetings will be approximately one hour and all meetings are mandatory. If you are available at this time please apply.
- What is Impact Fund?:
- The Occidental Impact Fund, established by students, for students, allows us to directly target and impact global issues that matter to us. Our mission: to research, advocate, and participate in sustainable and socially responsible investing to create positive global change. (See some of our past work at http://www.oxyif.blogspot.com/)
What will you do?:
Work with 16 other students to directly impact a global issues that matters to you. This process will be broken into three stages:
1. Select an issue that you want to impact
2. Identify a microfinance institution that directly or indirectly addresses that issue
3. Work with our other board members to fund your organization.
To get a copy of the application or if you have any questions, email oxyimpactfund@gmail.com. Please email completed applications to oxyimpactfund@gmail.com by midnight on September 25.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Impact Fund Goes to Nationals
We are excited to announce that three of Occidental Impact Funds' research team (Megan Lang, J. Anthony Labarga, and Taylor Corbett) have been invited to attend this year's National Conference on Undergraduate Research. At the conference our research team will be presenting two studies that identify best-practices within the fields of microfinance and community directed economic development. The following are abstracts of both studies:
Study #1: Loan Use as a Function of Bank Distance in India
Central to microfinance is the idea that entrepreneurial poor can rise out of poverty given access to capital, enabling them to start lucrative businesses. However, some have argued that the poor cannot engage in full-time entrepreneurial activities given limited access to markets, causing them to use loans to access other services offered, such as savings and insurance, or for consumption smoothing rather than building microenterprises (Allen 2007, Johnson and Sharma 2007). This has led to assertions that microfinance institutions (MFIs) must maintain a high supervisory presence, suggesting that they are best located close to their customers. This leads to our research question: Does distance from a bank affect the likelihood of microloans being used for income-generating versus non-income generating purposes?
We examine loan use in relation to distance (in minutes) from a bank as recorded in the Centre for Microfinance’s Financial Inclusion Survey to test the theory: as distance to customers increases, microloan use shifts from income-generating to non-income-generating activities. Our preliminary findings show a bimodal distribution. Loan use for growth is high when banks are very close, lower when banks are moderately far, and high when banks are distant.
These findings indicate that arguments for high supervision are partly unfounded, as respondents farthest from banks did not use loans for non-income-generating activities. This suggests that MFIs do not need to allocate many resources for monitoring loans, as the poor avoid incurring debt unless it is necessary or lucrative. However, the data also indicates that MFIs close to customers may be effective at encouraging income-generating loan use, while those far away can take advantage of a unique incentive structure: Individuals are unlikely to take out loans for non-income-generating uses when reaching a bank is difficult. The correlations found between distance from a bank and loan use must be further explored to provide a clearer understanding of the optimal distribution of MFIs in developing countries.
Study #2 - Social Capital and Development: Utilization of Community Elite for Ultra-poor Development in Rural Bangladesh
Development organizations often ignore or isolate the elite of communities in which they operate considering them inhibitory to the development process. Yet, increasingly, certain organizations have come to realize these leaders can assist in achieving program objectives. One such NGO is Building Resources Across Communities (BRAC), and its Confronting the Frontiers of Poverty Reduction – Targeting the Ultra Poor Program (TUP), created to assist Bangladesh’s ultra-poor escape extreme poverty. As part of the TUP program, BRAC has established community support groups comprised of “elite” village members, called Gram Daridro Bimochan Committees (GDBCs), to protect the program’s gifted assets to TUP participants from theft or damage. This research intends to understand what additional non-material transfers GDBCs provide to TUP participants, and the perceived value of such non-material transfers relative to other assets or services offered under the TUP Program. The research is based on group interviews of 670 subjects conducted in June 2010 in 22 villages of Bangladesh’s Rangpur and Naogaon districts.
Conclusions from this sample indicate that 79 percent of GDBC transfers ranked most-important are non-material in nature. Of these “intangibles” education support, sanitation support, and advice/encouragement are the most common. More specifically it was found that the majority (52 percent) of ultra-poor sampled value GDBC non-material transfers of advice/encouragement more than material transfers offered by the program. This is due to GDBCs unique ability to tailor their advice/encouragement to the individual needs of each ultra-poor, with such advice frequently falling into three distinct categories (emergency, preventative, and asset management advice). This finding is significant in that past BRAC studies have failed to identify advice/encouragement as a notable transfer between GDBCs and TUP. More generally this study finds that GDBCs clearly contribute to the attainment of TUP program objectives, acting as a force multiplier, to which there is no close substitute. However, since the majority of these transfers are non-material, and thus difficult to observe and quantify, GDBCs are chronically undervalued in comparison to other aspects of the TUP program.
Study #1: Loan Use as a Function of Bank Distance in India
Central to microfinance is the idea that entrepreneurial poor can rise out of poverty given access to capital, enabling them to start lucrative businesses. However, some have argued that the poor cannot engage in full-time entrepreneurial activities given limited access to markets, causing them to use loans to access other services offered, such as savings and insurance, or for consumption smoothing rather than building microenterprises (Allen 2007, Johnson and Sharma 2007). This has led to assertions that microfinance institutions (MFIs) must maintain a high supervisory presence, suggesting that they are best located close to their customers. This leads to our research question: Does distance from a bank affect the likelihood of microloans being used for income-generating versus non-income generating purposes?
We examine loan use in relation to distance (in minutes) from a bank as recorded in the Centre for Microfinance’s Financial Inclusion Survey to test the theory: as distance to customers increases, microloan use shifts from income-generating to non-income-generating activities. Our preliminary findings show a bimodal distribution. Loan use for growth is high when banks are very close, lower when banks are moderately far, and high when banks are distant.
These findings indicate that arguments for high supervision are partly unfounded, as respondents farthest from banks did not use loans for non-income-generating activities. This suggests that MFIs do not need to allocate many resources for monitoring loans, as the poor avoid incurring debt unless it is necessary or lucrative. However, the data also indicates that MFIs close to customers may be effective at encouraging income-generating loan use, while those far away can take advantage of a unique incentive structure: Individuals are unlikely to take out loans for non-income-generating uses when reaching a bank is difficult. The correlations found between distance from a bank and loan use must be further explored to provide a clearer understanding of the optimal distribution of MFIs in developing countries.
Study #2 - Social Capital and Development: Utilization of Community Elite for Ultra-poor Development in Rural Bangladesh
Development organizations often ignore or isolate the elite of communities in which they operate considering them inhibitory to the development process. Yet, increasingly, certain organizations have come to realize these leaders can assist in achieving program objectives. One such NGO is Building Resources Across Communities (BRAC), and its Confronting the Frontiers of Poverty Reduction – Targeting the Ultra Poor Program (TUP), created to assist Bangladesh’s ultra-poor escape extreme poverty. As part of the TUP program, BRAC has established community support groups comprised of “elite” village members, called Gram Daridro Bimochan Committees (GDBCs), to protect the program’s gifted assets to TUP participants from theft or damage. This research intends to understand what additional non-material transfers GDBCs provide to TUP participants, and the perceived value of such non-material transfers relative to other assets or services offered under the TUP Program. The research is based on group interviews of 670 subjects conducted in June 2010 in 22 villages of Bangladesh’s Rangpur and Naogaon districts.
Conclusions from this sample indicate that 79 percent of GDBC transfers ranked most-important are non-material in nature. Of these “intangibles” education support, sanitation support, and advice/encouragement are the most common. More specifically it was found that the majority (52 percent) of ultra-poor sampled value GDBC non-material transfers of advice/encouragement more than material transfers offered by the program. This is due to GDBCs unique ability to tailor their advice/encouragement to the individual needs of each ultra-poor, with such advice frequently falling into three distinct categories (emergency, preventative, and asset management advice). This finding is significant in that past BRAC studies have failed to identify advice/encouragement as a notable transfer between GDBCs and TUP. More generally this study finds that GDBCs clearly contribute to the attainment of TUP program objectives, acting as a force multiplier, to which there is no close substitute. However, since the majority of these transfers are non-material, and thus difficult to observe and quantify, GDBCs are chronically undervalued in comparison to other aspects of the TUP program.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Investment Decisions - Fall 2010
This semester 16 students comprised Occidental Impact Fund's Investment Board. Ranging from first years to seniors board members were pulled from a variety of academic departments including Urban and Environmental Policy, Diplomacy and World Affairs, Politics, and Economics. The board met multiple times through out the semester to learn about microfinance, define a goal, develop a criteria, and evaluate competing microfinance institutions for funding. The Impact Fund's fall 2010 Investment Board's funding decisions are as follows:
Pro Mujer - Mexico - $1000
Operating throughout Latin America, Pro Mujer is one of the world's most well regarded microfinance institutions. Building off a long history of success, Pro Mujer works to empower women not only economically, but socially through the use of micro-loans, business training, and support programs. Pro Mujer Mexico servers over 26,000 borrowers and has over 2,000 community banks throughout Mexico. Impact Fund selected Pro Mujer for funding due to their dedication to full spectrum programing. Not only does Pro Mujer provide individuals with micro-loans, but gives them additional training, health, business, and social support to ensure their entrepreneurs succeed.
Prasac - Cambodia - $2000
Created out of a partnership between the European Union and the Cambodian Government, Prasac works to rehabilitate the agricultural sector in six of Cambodia's 25 provinces. It's Prasac mission to provide efficient and sustainable financial services to individuals that lacked previous access to any form of banking. Impact Fund's Investment Board selected Prasac for its sustainable practices and unique target demographic.
If you're interested in joining Impact Fund's Spring Investment Board email corbett @oxy.edu, otherwise check back in the spring to see where our Spring Board chooses to invest.
Pro Mujer - Mexico - $1000
Operating throughout Latin America, Pro Mujer is one of the world's most well regarded microfinance institutions. Building off a long history of success, Pro Mujer works to empower women not only economically, but socially through the use of micro-loans, business training, and support programs. Pro Mujer Mexico servers over 26,000 borrowers and has over 2,000 community banks throughout Mexico. Impact Fund selected Pro Mujer for funding due to their dedication to full spectrum programing. Not only does Pro Mujer provide individuals with micro-loans, but gives them additional training, health, business, and social support to ensure their entrepreneurs succeed.
Prasac - Cambodia - $2000
Created out of a partnership between the European Union and the Cambodian Government, Prasac works to rehabilitate the agricultural sector in six of Cambodia's 25 provinces. It's Prasac mission to provide efficient and sustainable financial services to individuals that lacked previous access to any form of banking. Impact Fund's Investment Board selected Prasac for its sustainable practices and unique target demographic.
If you're interested in joining Impact Fund's Spring Investment Board email corbett @oxy.edu, otherwise check back in the spring to see where our Spring Board chooses to invest.
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