These courageous micro-entrepreneurs remind me that I was like one of them when I was growing up with 13 water-buffaloes in a three-acre rice field in Sri Lanka. I know the value of micro-loan, which helped my family to break away from the cycle of poverty caused by poor rice harvest, unpredictable monsoon, or simply being poor. A small loan could transform a person, a family, a village, and a nation.
About me:
With an AFS scholarship I came to Minnesota to study. Now I am an educator in the United States, teaching face-2-face and online students from Afghanistan to South Africa. With the sales of my recent book on globalization and the Washington Consensus, I established a number of tsunami scholarships and a Peace Prize in Sri Lanka. All proceeds after income tax are donated to tsunami scholarship projects and micro-finance programs. [Photo: With Jessica Jackley Flannery, the co-founder of Kiva at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, DC].