Founder Shyam K. Iyer discusses the basics of SKIC’s SKImfi program.

“The term ‘micro,’ at least to me, connotes community-mindedness. The business efforts of the women we work with aren’t global. They focus on very small economies, on their individual communities, and, if nothing else, SKI Charities is a community-minded organization. We believe that focusing on these small areas in a micro sense supports these women’s own ideas of community and responsibility.” -Shyam K. Iyer

Why choose to help women through microfinance?

This process is about getting more women involved in a system where they can feel confident by building their wealth through self-employment. There are a few other ways of doing that than micro-finance. In my own experience, when I’ve just been given something, I’ve never treated it very dearly or importantly. But when I worked for something, just as these women work with their loans and pay them back, I felt like part of an equal opportunity. When you’re doing microfinance at such a local level, it’s not solely about these women creating their own wealth and creating their own businesses.
There are amazing spillover effects. They often start by paying their kids’ school fees with some of the money they make, which is great in a social sense, as it encourages schools to operate better. Further, the women in SKImfi may hire some of their friends or sisters to work for their business. That’s another spillover effect. And to support their businesses, they buy from other suppliers, who aren’t a direct part of our program but benefit from its existence. The work these women do and the products they provide stimulate the whole community, and SKIC’s goal is to grow and continue to stimulate more and more communities.

Will you give us a bare bones explanation of microfinance?

Like we discussed in our spring blog post, Microfinance 101, it’s basically a bank for people who have very little to no income, probably no collateral, definitely not a formal job, maybe not even an informal job.
Think about people who do have all of those things. They go to a bank; they present their resumes, their background, and they ask for a loan to do whatever they have a plan to do. Then they get the loan with the expectation that they’ll pay it back. Through microfinance, we deal with people who don’t have that track-record, resume or anything else to support their need of a loan.
We support these women with loans that are very small, based on the expectation that they never got the chance to put that story together. The key to this is that they have the same potential as those who are privileged enough to go to their local banks. So they get a very small microloan from SKIC, and they are expected to pay it back just like you or I would have to go to a bank to pay it back.