Lendwithcare

Last updated
Lendwithcare
FoundedApril 2010;14 years ago (April 2010)
Founder CARE
TypeNon-profit organisation
Focus Microfinance and microloans
Location
  • London , United Kingdom
  • CARE International UK, c/o Ashurst LLP, London Fruit & Wool Exchange, 1 Duval Square, London, E1 6PW
Area served
Cambodia, Ecuador, Georgia, Malawi, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Pakistan, Palestine, Peru, Philippines, Rwanda, Senegal, Thailand, Togo, Vietnam and Zambia.
Website www.lendwithcare.org

Lendwithcare is a microfinance lending website from CARE International UK. [1] Launched in September 2010, it allows individuals and groups to make small loans to entrepreneurs in low-income countries, helping them improve their lives through business.

Contents

As of May 2024, Lendwithcare supports entrepreneurs in Cambodia, Ecuador, Georgia, Malawi, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Pakistan, Palestine, Peru, Philippines, Rwanda, Senegal, Thailand, Togo, Vietnam and Zambia.

To provide this support, Lendwithcare works with a range of local development partners, many of which are specialist microfinance institutions. While Lendwithcare does not charge interest to make this funding available, some local partners working with Lendwithcare do charge interest to borrowers to cover their operational costs.

As of January 2024, over 80,000 individual lenders had provided over £48m in loan funding to nearly 200,000 small business owners.

History

Lendwithcare was launched in September 2010.

In 2012, it launches a group lending feature, allowing individual lenders to lend as groups (such as churches or clubs) and track their impact together.

In 2021, Lendwithcare launches a grant funding feature, allowing users to make one-off grants in addition to loans. Unlike loans, these grants do not generate loan repayments. However, they do generate a positive impact on people's lives and reduce CO2 emissions.

The process

Lendwithcare works with a number of partner microfinance institutions in the countries in which it operates. If the microfinance institution is happy with an entrepreneur's idea or business plan, they approve the proposal and provide the initial loan requested. They also help the entrepreneur construct their profile for lendwithcare.org.

Lenders can browse the list of entrepreneurs on the website, read about their businesses, see the value of the loan they have requested, the percentage of the loan already provided by other lenders, and then choose an entrepreneur to lend to. Once the entrepreneur's loan is fully funded, the money is transferred to the microfinance institution to replace the initial loan already paid out to the entrepreneur. During this process lenders receive progress updates regarding the entrepreneur's progress. The entrepreneur gradually pays back their loan according to a repayment schedule. The microfinance institution transfers these repayments to CARE International who then credits the payment into lenders' lendwithcare.org accounts. Lenders can then either withdraw their money using a PayPal account or can use the credit to provide a loan to another entrepreneur. [2]

Partner microfinance institutions

Lendwithcare currently partners with 18 local development partners [3] , including:

Ambassadors

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Microcredit</span> Small loans to impoverished borrowers

Microcredit is the extension of very small loans (microloans) to impoverished borrowers who typically lack collateral, steady employment, and a verifiable credit history. It is designed to support entrepreneurship and alleviate poverty. Many recipients are illiterate, and therefore unable to complete paperwork required to get conventional loans. As of 2009 an estimated 74 million people held microloans that totaled US$38 billion. Grameen Bank reports that repayment success rates are between 95 and 98 percent. The first economist who had invented the idea of micro loans was Jonathan Swift in the 1720’s. Microcredit is part of microfinance, which provides a wider range of financial services, especially savings accounts, to the poor. Modern microcredit is generally considered to have originated with the Grameen Bank founded in Bangladesh in 1983. Many traditional banks subsequently introduced microcredit despite initial misgivings. The United Nations declared 2005 the International Year of Microcredit. As of 2012, microcredit is widely used in developing countries and is presented as having "enormous potential as a tool for poverty alleviation." Microcredit is a tool that can possibly be helpful to reduce feminization of poverty in developing countries.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kiva (organization)</span> Micro-loan platform

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MicroLoan Foundation is a UK-based microfinance charity that gives small loans and business training to women in Malawi, Zimbabwe and Zambia. The main objectives of the organisation is poverty alleviation and gender empowerment, and consequently its main focus has been on the women living in the rural areas, who make up majority of the poor in Sub-Saharan Africa. In 2022 alone, MicroLoan supported over 160,000 women to grow businesses. With these loans and free business and financial literacy training, the women are able to start businesses thereby increasing their household incomes, business profits and assets. They are able to make savings to support them during future hardship. The women are also able to pay for their children to attend school, pay for medical care and make their families more food secure. Much of the training is delivered in song, dance and role-play because of low literacy rates.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wokai</span>

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Zidisha is a peer-to-peer microlending service that allows people to lend small amounts of money directly to entrepreneurs in developing countries. It is the first peer-to-peer microlending service to link borrowers and lenders across international borders without a local microfinance institution intermediary. The organization is named after the Swahili word zidisha, which means "grow" or "expand".

Stichting SYPO is a Dutch NGO established in 2003, with the objective to 'offer structural aid in Uganda by initiating and supporting projects with a sustainable, entrepreneurial character'. SYPO focuses on microfinance and SME financing in rural areas. The NGO has confined its operations to the former Mukono District. SYPO works with around fifteen volunteers in the Netherlands, and works with paid employees and partner projects Uganda. The core focus of SYPO is microfinance, through its Ugandan subsidiary SYPO Uganda Ltd. The main achievement of SYPO has been to develop a business model to reach women in very remote areas with low-cost business loans, relying on "lean" principles, mobile money and online technology systems. SYPO's Director is Duko Hopman, supervised by a board which is chaired by Ger van der Bruggen.

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The impact of microcredit is the study of microcredit and its impact on poverty reduction which is a subject of much controversy. Proponents state that it reduces poverty through higher employment and higher incomes. This is expected to lead to improved nutrition and improved education of the borrowers' children. Some argue that microcredit empowers women. In the US and Canada, it is argued that microcredit helps recipients to graduate from welfare programs. Critics say that microcredit has not increased incomes, but has driven poor households into a debt trap, in some cases even leading to suicide. They add that the money from loans is often used for durable consumer goods or consumption instead of being used for productive investments, that it fails to empower women, and that it has not improved health or education.

References

  1. Jones, Rupert (19 August 2011). "Lending small business a hand". The Guardian . Retrieved 31 October 2015.
  2. Jones, Rupert (10 August 2013). "Lendwithcare offers helping hand to world's poorer entrepreneurs". The Guardian . Retrieved 31 October 2015.
  3. "Microfinance from CARE International UK". lendwithcare.org. Retrieved 2024-08-09.
  4. Dooley, Stacey (14 December 2012). "Lending Is the New Giving". The Huffington Post . Huffington Post Media Group . Retrieved 31 October 2015.
  5. Meaden, Deborah. "Deborah travels to Cambodia to support entrepreneurs". Deborah Meaden. Retrieved 31 October 2015.
  6. Stewart, Alastair (12 December 2011). "Lend with care: Alastair Stewart visits a Bosnian fundraising scheme". The Guardian . Retrieved 31 October 2015.