Recently I’ve seen a few articles by the China Daily and Microcapital that discuss how the microfinance industry in China is growing rapidly, with strong YoY grow.  This sounds right considering the economic growth that they are seeing, but then it got me wondering why there are more lending platforms or easier ways to loan to these people.  Wokai used to be a lending platform that only served people in … Read More >>

If you’ve been looking for a microfinance platform focusing on women and girls, today is your lucky day! A new website called Catapult combines crowdfunding and microfinance to help women and girls around the world.  Launched at the Clinton Global Initiative, Catapult features a wide range of projects from child brides to family planning to education.  The site goes beyond traditional business microfinance to help the needs of women and … Read More >>

With the devestation that hurricane Sandy has caused all along the east coast, many peope’s homes, jobs, business are wiped out.  I’m sure there will be lots of aid coming their way, but how much of it will the individuals have to rebuild themselves?  With projections of $50 billion in damages and millions of insurance claims, I can’t imagine that people will have money for necessities, let alone rebuilding their … Read More >>

Below is the full text of the email that Wokai sent out today (also is currently on their home page): Dear Wokai Contributors, We regret to tell you that we are starting the process of winding down Wokai and concluding operations. Wokai has been actively searching for a new CEO to take the organization to the next level in China. However, as of our application deadline, no clear candidate came … Read More >>

I just took a look at Wokai — and noticed they’ve completed a brand new website redesign sometime in the past week or two. Custom websites are what I do for a living, and I’m certainly impressed with the result they came up with. I’m willing to bet that this site will convert web traffic to dollars raised at a much higher clip than their old site did. The design is … Read More >>

India is a country of villages where 70% population lies in these villages. There is huge migration of population from Villages to big cities because of less employment opportunity in these villages. There are so many entrepreneur who are migrating to cities in search of jobs because they don’t have the availability of seed capital with which they can start their own business. Rang De is an effort to stop … Read More >>

I was just taking a look at Wokai as a result of a post on Facebook (linking to this post about moving Wokai to the cloud) — and noticed a feature I absolutely LOVE when I signed in. Contribution Plans! Uploaded with Skitch! The feature allows a registered member of Wokai to set up a recurring contribution (to entrepreneurs in China) and/or donation (to Wokai overhead) that will be billed … Read More >>

I know I’m writing this one a little late (been traveling in Asia) but wanted to give a shout out to Vittana and United Prosperity.  Both Microfinance platforms have recently reach over $100,000 in loans!  There are of course other platforms that have exceeded this already, but Vittana and UnitedProsperity are two that have launched within the last year and have taken a new spin on lending.  It is great … Read More >>

At some point, everyone has received an email or message, whether it be through facebook, gmail, MSN, etc, from an annonymous person saying that they would like to meet up.  I think most people know the trick by now, but every once and a while, it looks real.  Earlier this month, I received an email on Wokai that I got a message from a new user.  I didn’t recognize the … Read More >>

Throughout the month of March, Vittana has been running their first — but not their last – March Microfinance Madness campaign with the goal of getting friends, family, and co-workers coming together to raise money to send kids to school. For those of you not familiar with Vittana,they are enabling students from around the globe to get access to higher education for the first time through student loans. They’ve gotten a fair … Read More >>