H3O

Amazing! Yesterday I received a mail from Jacki Marshall , a sweet lady, who I met 10 years ago on a Nile cruise. I recalled that we had a wonderful cruise in the company of Jacki and her friends. She sent a mass mail to show her support to Barack Obama for today’s poll.

When I inquired that she was doing, she replied that she was involved in micro finance in Kenya. That immediately aroused my curiosity. How could she living in the US, North Carolina, possibly be dealing in micro credit in Kenya? She thus opened a new avenue to me thru H3O. Wow! this is a living example of the Grameen Bank principle you could participate.

How it works:

Lenders choose an individual business, group, or village project in a developing country to support using the h3o web site and paypal. The loan can be as little as $25. Our Micro Finance Institute partners (MFI’s) upload entrepreneur businesses and village projects to our web site that need funding. They are real clients who need help.

Most loans are funded between 6-9 months (agricultural loans 9-12 months).

Throughout the loan period the loan officer sends a short e-mail journal update to the web site every 3-4 months. As the loan gets paid back EACH lender has the choice to take back the funds or “recycle” the money back to another individual, group or village project. Micro credit success repayment rates are high. (e.g. Grameen 95%)

What is different about this philanthropic model is that your original loan money can be continually impacting a working poor family of your choice. For example: A single $100 loan amount can be recycled 10 times in five years, which means 10 families have been lifted out of poverty with a single, initial $100 loan amount.

h3o partners with credible, registered, accountable MFI’s with transparent financial records whose mission is empowerment of the working poor.

Our MFI’s and NGO’s (Non Government Organizations) in developing countries choose which CBO’s (Community Based Organizations) to lend to. The CBO’s are mature women’s groups with strong self governance and a proven track record of debt repayment and have been meeting for a minimum of one year.

Each CBO that has access to h3o funding receives ongoing business and life skills training from our partner MFI in developing countries, to better ensure success and debt repayment.

Our MFI partner distributes and collects the loan and manages, and in some cases manages savings accounts for clients.

h3o loans are given without collateral. They are based on dignity and trust. The CBO group itself acts as guarantors to one another securing loan repayment and future loans. If one defaults, the group is responsible for any defaults. Failure to pay the loan limits any further loans to the individual and the group. This “in house” peer pressure is one of the main reasons micro credit has such a successful loan repayment rate of 95 %.(Grameen Bank) All are stakeholders in each other’s success.