By Gaurav Kikani | President
To our supporters:
The last few months have proved extremely busy and exciting as LEND continues to grow and evolve.
We quickly transitioned our next generation of leaders into their new roles and began pursuing our strategic goal of building sustainable client pipelines. Through extensive outreach, we were able to form relationships with a number of prominent community organizations and increase our local visibility. This outreach has translated into a number of promising and passionate clients who are looking to take their business ideas to the next level.
Last week, we began our 8-week business training session with five new clients, and have four more looking to start soon. We also are working with three prospective borrowers and are looking to give them loans, pending approval. With businesses ranging from bakeries to fitness studios, LEND members are extremely excited to begin working with these passionate entrepreneurs.
Aside from lending and business training, we also worked to initiate dialogue on campus about the scope of international microfinance by inviting Tom Coleman, founder of the Bottom Billion Fund, to speak about his initiative which aims to uplift people around the world living under $1.25 a day. Co-sponsored with NCDC, another student group on campus, the talk engaged students and asked them to consider the benefits and disadvantages of various proposed solutions to poverty. LEND hopes to continue hosting such events to increase awareness about economic disparity in the community and the ways it can be addressed.
With the scale-up of our operations underway, LEND's need for capital is constantly growing. We thank all of you for your contributions and value your support as LEND builds momentum and enters an exciting new chapter of its development.
Please feel free to contact us at lend@u.northwestern.edu.
Thank you, as always, and best regards,
Gaurav Kikani
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
