Charlotte-Shelburne Rotary - Newsletter

President John Beal welcomes members and guests, lead the pledge and introduced Kris Engstrom who gave the devotional. John noted that Rosalyn Graham had made two makeups during her visit to Colorado: one to the Vail Club and one to the Edwards, CO club. She brought banners from both clubs to add to our collection.

Thanks to Dave Rice and his Administration Committee for cleaning up the basement where the Rotary stuff is stored.

Rotary Thought

Facts of the Matter – Microlending

By Paul Engleman
The Rotarian -- March 2010

Modern microlending is closely associated with the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. It dates back to 1976, when professor Muhammad Yunus, head of the Rural Economics Program at the University of Chittagong, made a personal loan of US$27 to 42 people in the village of Jobra, enabling them to buy raw materials for their work. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.

After those first borrowers repaid their loans, Yunus established the Grameen Bank Project, which expanded across Bangladesh with the help of his students. The Grameen Bank was officially chartered in 1983. Grameen means “village” in the Bengali language.

As of August 2009, Grameen Bank had 2,559 branches serving 84,652 villages in Bangladesh, and 141 “replication” partners operating microcredit programs in 38 countries.

In 1973, Acción International claimed credit for coining the term microenterprise and launching the field of microcredit when it issued small loans in the town of Recife, Brazil. Started as a student-run volunteer organization in Venezuela in 1961, it grew into an economic development group and one of the world’s largest microfinance institutions.

The majority of microloan recipients are women. The United Nations estimates that women make up 76 percent of microcredit recipients around the world, accounting for nearly 90 percent of those in Asia but less than 33 percent in the Middle East. At Grameen Bank, women receive more than 95 percent of loans. One of the world’s largest microfinance institutions – Pro Mujer, in Bolivia – lends only to women.

Of all microcredit borrowers, 70 percent are in Asia, 14 percent are in Latin America, and 10 percent are in sub-Saharan Africa. As of 2007, the countries with the highest loan portfolios were Indonesia, Colombia, Peru, Mexico, and Vietnam.

Microlending has spread into the United States. The U.S. Small Business Administration has a microloan program that operates through intermediary lenders in 46 states, Puerto Rico, and Washington, D.C. Loan amounts range from $500 to $35,000; the average is about $13,000.

Acción USA began making microloans in the United States in 1991. Grameen America opened its first branch in Queens, New York City, in January 2008.

The opportunities for individuals to participate as microlenders grew significantly in October 2005 with the establishment of Kiva.org, a nonprofit Web site that enables users to make personal loans over the Internet to people and microenterprises in developing countries. Based in San Francisco, the organization takes its name from a Swahili word that means agreement or unity. With nearly $60 million in completed loan terms, Kiva reports that its repayment rate is over 98 percent. The average Kiva loan is about $400.

In September 2007, eBay launched an online, for-profit “competitor” to Kiva called MicroPlace, which it acquired in 2006 from its founder, Tracey Pettengill Turner, a Stanford business school graduate trained in microfinance at Grameen Bank. Individuals who lend through MicroPlace can earn interest on their loans, whereas those who lend through Kiva can only receive repayment of principal.

Announcements

3/10 meeting – speaker from Blue Cross/Blue Shield
3/17 – Mark Nash of Vermont Stage
3/20 – Rotary Leadership Institute in Rutland
3/27 – Rotary Leadership Institute at Dartmouth
6/12 – District Convention at Davis Center in Burlington
6/20-23 – Rotary International Convention in Montreal

Bowl-A-Thon – Ric Flood said that he has distributed the lists of who contributed last year to the people who solicited them, and has blank sheets for everyone who can give him names to solicit this year. His office creates individualized letters for the members to personalize and mail. He says that if everyone participated with a list of possible donors we could raise $40,000.

Sergeant at Arms

Kris Engstrom, subbing to Don Condon, levied a notoriety fine on Roz Graham whose picture was in the Shelburne News receiving the Hilton Wick Award for Community Service from Champlain Housing Trust.

Happy fines:

Jimmy Fayette – happy to be here
Gary Marcotte – also happy to be here
John Beal – going to Jackson Hole to ski for a week – and the District AG will run the Rotary meeting
George Schiavone – helped Bob Finn at Town Meeting – and Bob won
Tod Whitaker – the fifth winter farmers market will be held on Saturday – and there will be a computer security workshop for anyone who would like to attend next Wednesday. Frank Thornton of Blackthorn will lead the workshop at noon and again at 7 p.m. at the Town Center meeting room.
Eric Hanley – had a good week skiing at Sugarbush – and the sap is running
Debby Hanley – happy birthday to Eric
Steve Dates – great hockey game
Elaine Dates – her birthday – and thanks to Steve for writing a story about RYLA and the speech contest for the Shelburne News
Rosalyn Graham – for a fun two weeks of family skiing in Vail – attending two Rotary Club meetings in Colorado – thanks for Judy Christensen and Sharon Beal (and John Beal) for reporting the meetings during her absence – watching the Olympics – and that amazing Canada/US final hockey game
Russ Blodgett – his son has a job at dealer.com and his daughter is accepted at Wake Forest to study accounting
Terrell Titus – sorry to have missed the last meeting
Dave Rice – his birthday
Fritz Horton – watching the Olympics with his wife Marianne who taught some of the Olympians in school.
Michele Lash – working with the military
George Ewins – visiting Yankee Medical and having the manager agree to sell George’s Back Cyclers in six stores
Sam Feitelberg – welcome back to the H2H group
Danny Bowen – Barbara fell but no break
Kris Engstrom – a write up in Shelburne News – new and better space being built at her shop – thanks to Terrell Titus for her help when he delivery person had an accident
Ric Flood – six days in Jamaica with his daughter

Lucky draw: $220 in the pot. Elaine’s number was drawn but she chose the wrong card.

New Member

Carol Geske has been proposed for membership. She has a background in finance and marketing and went to Honduras with the group in 2009.

Guest Speaker

Jason Gibbs and John Beal

Adam introduced Jason Gibbs, Commissioner for Parks & Recreation in the Douglas Administration. He was on Gov. Douglas’ senior staff as press secretary, then in charge of civil and military affairs. A native of Vermont he studied political science at the University of Massachusetts.

Gibbs explained that the challenge for his department has been to leverage the department’s assets to fight the recession. They have been working to increase productivity and raise the value of the public assets.

Parks & Recreation has three divisions: forests, parks and land.

Forests – they have increased timber sales with the objective of greater stewardship and improved forest health. This has had an economic impact both in jobs (10,000 people employed) and products ($1.5 billion). The land that has been forested has most been public land, during a period when private land owners are not harvesting because prices are low. Hence the state has been able to initiate a counter-cyclical strategy and increase state sales by 30% with no complaints.

Parks – Vermont has 52 state parks, a diverse selection within 30 minutes of every community offering everything from hiking and bird watching to water sports and boating, and camping. The parks generate $60 million in communities near the parks.

The focus has been to boost utilization by increasing local input, and identifying shovel-ready projects that got $5.6 million in federal support for 136 construction projects across the system. This was especially beneficial for small local contractors who could bid on these projects but wouldn’t have been able to qualify for big projects. The net benefit: guest experience improved.

Lands – the department manages seven mountain top communication sites which are key to advancing to 21^st century telecommunication and they have made a more efficient internal system. They have also done an inventory of their holdings of land, some of it with no role to play in forestry or parks. These have been returned to the marketplace where they may have an appeal to purchasers. An example is the Cheney House on Lake Willoughby which had been operated as an inn by the state with limited success and now has been returned to the tax rolls.

The bottom line, he said, was to choose to be nimble and innovative and generate activity in the state rather than to hunker down when the recession hit. “We chose to fight it out,” he said, “And the impact has been remarkable – we’ve cut $2.2 million from our general fund appropriation and made it up by generating revenue.”

“This is a perfect example of how government can do more with less,” he said. “We cut spending, but we needed flexibility to achieve our objective, flexibility from both the legislature and the administration.”