Microfinance loans bolster business, human dignity
May 2009
With an investment of just $48,000 over four years – roughly $33 a day – Corning has helped hundreds of villagers in central China dramatically improve the quality of their lives. Families once trapped in poverty are now running thriving businesses ranging from growing tea to raising pigs. And in the process, they’re developing valuable business skills that will benefit China’s rural population for generations to come.
Economic advancement and self-sufficiency is exactly the sort of result Corning China was hoping to achieve when, in 2005, it joined forces with the China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation (CFPA) and Mercy Corps, an international humanitarian aid and development organization that focuses on emergency relief services, economic development and civil society initiatives, to provide business loans to rural villagers. These microfinance loans help low-income families who might otherwise be unqualified for commercial loans issued by more traditional lenders.
The program focused on Xisheng, a remote village in Xiapu County in the Fujian province of central China.
Corning’s investment, comprised of contributions from each of the company’s seven business entities in China, served as seed money for a total funding pool. Combined with matching contributions by local governments and banks, the four-year program has collected an astounding USD $480,000 in available loans. Since 2005 – under the administration of CFPA and with guidance from Mercy Corps., – about 400 Xisheng-area households have received a total of 721 loans.
Other microfinance loans have helped villagers grow and market tea, increase the size of their fields and vineyards, build new concrete homes and animal pens, and even provide the means to cook not with firewood, but with gas – a plentiful byproduct from raising pigs. The program also encourages loan recipients to strengthen their own community relationships.
And, based on the success of the Xisheng program, Corning has signed another four-year commitment with CFPA to extend the microfinance program in Xuyu, a fishing village in Fujian.
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