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UST MicroCredit Program awarded $5,000 grant for Turkey Project
10/13/2010
 The University of St. Thomas MicroCredit program recently received a $5,000 grant from the Clinton Global Initiative University for their current microloan project in Turkey. The UST Micro Credit program is a student-run organization providing financial opportunity to less fortunate women in developing countries.
“The overall goal of MicroCredit is to alleviate poverty from the ground up,” said Thomas Barnes, MicroCredit president. “We don’t give people money and create a dependency on receiving money, but we show them how they can turn their lives and family situations around.”
Through the past four years the Program has maintained a tremendous global presence through projects in the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico, Pakistan, and Chile.
President Bill Clinton launched the Clinton Global Initiative University in 2007 to engage the next generation of leaders on college campuses around the world. For the past two years, UST MicroCredit has attended the CGIU meeting.
In March 2010, MicroCredit students travelled to Istanbul, Turkey to lay the foundations for a new microloan project. The project collaborates with a Turkish nonprofit organization called Kimse Yok Mu, or “Helping Hands.” Financial assistance as well as education and professional opportunities are available for women who lack the resources to provide for their families.
“There are a lot of impoverished women in Istanbul,” Barnes explained. “Their children need food and they don’t have jobs. The plan is to give them loans through Kimse Yok Mu. They will take classes and learn how to do intricate woodworking, and then they will be sent home with their own tools and supplies so they can make their own goods and sell it in the market to provide for their children.”
The MicroCredit student board is optimistic about the success of the Turkey project. Michael Black, vice president of fundraising, estimated an overall loan repayment rate in the 90th percentile for the entire MicroCredit program, and anticipates similar results in Turkey.
“The program is successful because it mirrors the Catholic values our school teaches and is supported by the campus community,” Black said. “Each student comes in, finds something they’re passionate about, and runs with it.”
Students interested in becoming active with the MicroCredit program are encouraged to attend biweekly Tuesday meetings during activity period from 12:30 to 2 p.m. For more information, please contact the president, Thomas Barnes, at barnestp@stthom.edu.
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