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Microcredit is small loans with little to no collateral for poor people.
I thought this was a good thing.
I actually thought they had no interest on the loans.
I thought they didn't have to pay back unless things went well.
A documentary on TV told me I was completely wrong.
The interest is high.
Payment starts immediately.
If you don't pay, there are people that will come to you and stay until you pay.
If you are in a group, the other members will be punished if you don't pay.
Much higher pressure to pay than we have in Norway.
Poor people feel stronger about paying their debts than rich people, and suffer more because of it.
Sometimes they won't accept your payments unless you deposit a certain amount into your bankaccount.. ??
The result is that the poor people get poorer.
Borrowing from moneysharks to pay off their microcredit loans.
Having as many as 8 or more microcredit loans and borrowing from moneysharks.
Selling off everything you own, for low prices of course, to pay the money you owe.
Other problems caused by this is:
Men moving to cities to try to find low paying dayjobs to pay off loans.
Most likely someone being forced to do things they would normally never think of.
This got me thinking of a plan I thought of once, that woul let people help people to get out of debt.
The only problem with the plan was that it just takes too much money to do it in Norway :)
Too much debt..
But people in "rich" countries can help people in poorer countries to fix this extra problem,
and it will take much less than trying to do the same in your own.
I will try to implement my little plan on my own, but I will of course happily accept any
help that might come my way, and report about the progress here.
Maybe I'll get myself a website for this topic eventually.
The plan is simple (to me) and this is how I see it:
Find a group that has microcreditloans.
Help them pay off all their loans.
Move to the next group.
The group that has been helped, are supposed to find another group and help
them as much as they can, just like they have been helped.
No pressure of course.
When anyone has helped a group to become free of debt, they both move on to try to help the next.
No papers, no force, just people and honor.
First task is to find a group to help.
Second task is to find out how much it takes to help.
Probably need a trusted person in the country to take care of things.
One of the persons that are involved in the microcredit business got the Nobel Peaceprize.
The plan is to undo what he did to get it.
Sounds insane right? :)
If you have any information, ideas or input about this I would appreciate it if you told me.
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