We were happy to see the recent press about improving economic conditions in the West Bank.  The International Monetary Fund is forecasting a 7% growth rate for 2009, the highest rate of growth since the Intifada.  Leaders in the PA, Israel and US responded favorably and are advocating continued efforts to sustain the recent trends. Prime Minister Netanyahu called on Diaspora Jews to assist Arabs in investing in the Palestinian economy and Secretary of State Clinton issued a $200 million aid package to the Palestinian Authority to support continued growth.

We, like Secretary Clinton, believe that it is more important than ever to contribute to economic development in the Palestinian territories.  While state-level aid will support growth at the large enterprise and public sector level, there is just as large a need for support at the bottom of the pyramid.  Remember, microenterprises make up 95% of all businesses in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and 90% have no access to credit services.  We believe that microfinance can play an important role in sustaining the recent progress and in catalyzing further growth in the future.

We are very proud to announce that Craig Newmark, the founder of Craigslist.org, has joined the LendforPeace.org team as a member of our Advisory Board.

Craig is one of the pioneers of community-building on the web and has long been a supporter of peace initiatives in the Middle East.  We couldn’t be more excited to work with such a well known and influential web entrepreneur and social activist.

To see the full press release on Craig’s involvement with LendforPeace.org, CLICK HERE.

Craig Newmark, Founder of Craigslist.org and LendforPeace.org Advisory Board Member

LendforPeace.org was featured yesterday on Fox’s national business network Fox Business.

To see a clip of the interview with LendforPeace.org Co-Founder David Fraga, CLICK HERE.

Last night, LendforPeace.org held the official launch of its microfinance web-platform! Over a hundred people joined the founding team at the Wharton School of Business in Philadelphia for the unveiling of the site.

University of Pennsylvania Chaplain Chas Howard gave a moving invocation on the power of hope and opportunity can have on the Middle East and how working together across ethnic and religious boundaries may help us realize that Shalom and Salaam mean the same thing.  The ever insightful and articulate Dr. John DiIulio,  first director of the White House Office of Faith Based Initiatives, described LendforPeace.org as a model of action in the face of an overwhelmingly complex conflict and lauded its ability to practice cura personalis, a Jesuit notion of addressing each individual’s unique needs and talents.

Then, Co-Founders Sam Adelsberg, Andrew Dudum, David Fraga and Allam Taj gave a presentation about LendforPeace.org through the eyes of Rabiha, one of the entrepreneurs on the site.  At 7:38 PM EST, they made the first loan through the live site.

LendforPeace.org Co-Founders (from left to right): David Fraga, Allam Taj, Sam Adelsberg and Andrew Dudum

A surprise finale, the crowd was at that point joined live from Ramallah via teleconference by Salma Suleyman, Resource Development Manager at LendforPeace.org’s partner microfinance institution Asala.  Salma, who stayed up until 3AM to be a part of the event, thanked those in attendance for their support and explained how Asala’s partnership with LendforPeace.org would allow Asala to serve deserving entrepreneurs in the West Bank that they otherwise would not be able to fund.  She encouraged the attendees to go to the website, find their favorite entrepreneur and invest in peace.

Salma joins the LendforPeace.org launch event live from Ramallah

We plan to post more video and photo coverage of the event in the coming days.  In the interim, you can check out the following video summary of the LendforPeace.org launch event which was put together by the Univerity of Pennsylvania’s campus newspaper, The Daily Pennsylvanian.

Now that the site is live we look forward to growing the LendforPeace.org community and working together to make a difference in the Middle East.

LendforPeace.org is honored to welcome David Gutelius to its Advisory Board.  Dr. Gutelius is a well-respected professional in the fields of both microeconomic development and social media technology.  He brings a diverse and esteemed background as an individual who has on the one hand spent years consulting the world’s most prestigious organizations on doing business in the Middle East, and on the other helped lead the largest artificial intelligence research project in history.

As both a mechanism for economic development and as a platform with the potential to humanize conflict through social media, LendforPeace.org is well suited to Dr. Gutelius’ talents.   We at LendforPeace.org look forward to working with Dr. Gutelius along with the rest of the advisory board to maximize our impact in both capacities.  Please find Dr. Gutelius’ bio below:

Dr. David Gutelius is a co-founder and Chief Technical Officer at Social Kinetics, a Silicon Valley pioneer in adaptive social media technologies. A specialist in social networks and economics, he co-founded the Social Computing Lab at the Artificial Intelligence Center at SRI International. Gutelius also co-founded and ran Ishtirak, a technology and microeconomic development counsultancy focused exclusively on the Middle East and Islamic Africa, serving clients from IBM to Frito Lay to Beruit Container Terminal and helping to scale regional microfinance operations Sanabel and Grameen-Jameel, LTD. He currently serves as an advisor to Meedan and on the board of Teachers Without Borders. Previously, Gutelius was a Visiting Professor at Stanford University.

For those of you who have been following the LendforPeace.org story over the past few months on this blog and for those of you who have been a part of the story  since the time over a year ago when LendforPeace.org was nothing but an idea, we have some exciting news that has been a long time coming:

LendforPeace.org is proud to announce that it will launch to the world on February 5th, 2009!

Come be a part of  the excitement by joining us at our launch event.  As all four of LendforPeace.org’s founders have current or previous ties with the University of Pennsylvania, we thought there was no better place to launch the site than on Penn’s campus in Philadelphia. Here are the details:

LendforPeace.org Philadelphia Launch Event
7:00 PM, Thursday February 5, 2009
Jon M. Huntsman Hall G6
University of Pennsylvania
3730 Walnut Street

The launch event will include a presentation by the founders, an invocation from University Chaplain Chas Howard and a keynote address on active citizenship by Dr. John DiIulio, the first Director of the White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives.

Our Philadelphia launch is brought to you in partnership with the Penn Israel Coalition, Penn for Palestine, the Penn Arab Students Society, Fox Leadership, the Middle East Center, PRISM, and the Penn Microfinance Club.

We plan to run events in a variety of other cities in the coming months to bring LendforPeace.org to you.  If you would like to host a launch event in your city, let us know by emailing Team[at]lendforpeace.org.   If you cannot make it to Philadelphia on the 5th, please visit us via the web next week and participate in LendforPeace.org’s mission to promote economic opportunity and political stability in the Middle East through microfinance.

This fall the Economist ran an  interesting article on the virtues of microcredit in the context of the financial crisis.  We found it to be a helpful primer for those that are new to the subject.  Hope you enjoy!

“Wall Street’s titans minted money in good times but now find it hard to repay their debts, if they are in business at all. Ironic, then, that many of the world’s poor are better credit risks than the once-high-flyers at Lehman Brothers. This is one of the attractions of microcredit, the lending of tiny sums—as little as $50—to people at the bottom of the economic pyramid. It is an increasingly bright light in the gloom of the financial world.

Micro-borrowers range from farmers in rural areas to shopkeepers, artisans and street vendors in cities. In places where banks do not reach the poor, micro-lenders (often NGOs and non-profit organisations) provide capital to people who can put it to good use. If you think this looks like another subprime scheme—lending money to people who should not be borrowing—cheer up. Micro-borrowers have a stellar repayment record: Muhammad Yunus, founder of Bangladesh’s Grameen Bank and recipient of the 2006 Nobel peace prize for his work in microfinance, says repayment rates are 95-98%. American credit-card holders are not that dependable.

Microcredit is not a solution to poverty: the very poorest often do not have the wherewithal to start businesses or the income stream to make regular loan repayments. Processing so many small loans is also expensive for the lender, so interest rates can be high. But they are usually much lower than the local loan shark’s, and poor people seem generally happy to have a reliable source of finance.

Increasingly, mainstream financial firms see money to be made. A study by the MicroBanking Bulletin puts the inflation-adjusted returns for lenders at around 2.5% of assets, on a par with commercial banking. Advocates of the poor worry that too much commercialism will ruin microfinance, but a decent return will attract more capital, broaden its reach and make the whole enterprise more sustainable.

Microcredit’s marriage with technology is opening new opportunities. Mobile phones and a local shopowner willing to handle the cash can extend microlending to a wider audience. XacBank, in Mongolia, is planning a mobile-banking programme that could cover as many as 300,000 people—no small feat in a nomadic country where livestock outnumber people 13 to one. Another bad year on Wall Street and goat-herding may look attractive there as well.”

LendforPeace.org is proud to announce the addition of Howard Finkelstein, Hanna Siniora and Delphine Thizy to its Advisory Board.  Each is a respected leader in development, microfinance and/or peace activism in the Middle East.  Please find their bios below.  LendforPeace.org plans to announce additional members of the board in the coming weeks. 

Howard Finkelstein – Law Offices of Howard J. Finkelstein

Howard Finkelstein is one of the country’s pioneers in the securitization of microfinance-related obligations. Mr. Finkelstein, who recently left a national law firm to establish his own practice, focuses a great part of his practice on structuring capital market instruments to bring Western capital to microfinance institutions worldwide. He was the lead attorney in the $60 million securitization known as MicroFinance Securities (MFS) XXEB, in which he successfully structured the multi-currency securitization of loans to 30 microfinance institutions in 15 countries. In 2007, he served as US counsel to Blue Orchard in the transaction known as BOLD 2007, which was named the Sustainable Deal of the Year for 2007. His work has helped to bring nearly $1 billion to MFIs worldwide. Mr. Finkelstein participates broadly in the sector, having organized and co-chaired three conferences and spoken at numerous other public and private forums on microfinance. He is on the Board of Directors of the Microfinance Club of New York, Secretary of Microlumbia, Inc., and on the Advisory Boards of Green Microfinance and Frogtek LLC.

Hanna Siniora – Palestinian National Council

Hanna Siniora is a Palestinian Christian who lives in East Jerusalem.  He is the publisher of The Jerusalem Times and a co-Chief Executive Officer of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information.  He is also a member of the Palestine National Council and the chairperson of the Palestinian-American Chamber of Commerce.  An early proponent of dialogue and negotiations with Israel, Siniora has a long history of involvement in pro-peace activities. For his lifetime commitment to working towards Palestinian-Israeli peace, he was awarded the Order of the Knights of Malta.

Delphine Thizy – PlaNet Finance, Director of the Palestinian Territories

Delphine Thizy is the Director of the the Palestinian Territories for PlaNet Finance. PlaNet Finance is an international organization whose mission is to fight poverty through microfinance. The PlaNet Finance Group is active in more than 60 countries with an international network of 38 offices. In 2007 PlaNet Finance Advisory Services provided assistance to 220 microfinance institutions (MFIs), reaching almost 9 million clients. Before taking charge of the Palestinian Territories, Ms. Thizy was the PlaNet Finance Regional Coordinator for South Asia. She has also been Head of Mission in Afghanistan where she was in charge of the technical assistance mission for Sunduq (an Afghan MFI). Before joining PlaNet Finance, Ms. Thizy worked for an NGO in Mozambique and with UNDP and the MFI PARC in the Palestinian Territories. She holds a Master of Science of the territory from the University Pierre-Mendès France of Grenoble.

We are pleased to announce that LendforPeace.org has been chosen by the Harvard Kennedy School of Government’s International Consulting Organization (ICO) for a semester-long collaborative consulting project.

ICO is a student-run group at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) that provides students with opportunities to work on consulting projects with organizations that have an international development mission. Through ICO, teams of students volunteer their unique skills over the course of the academic year to help these organizations address critical issues.

Three HKS students have been assigned to LendforPeace.org to assist with marketing, budgeting and fundraising. Each ICO team member that is working with LendforPeace.org has an impressive and relevant background:

Jo Aylor:

Jo is a first year Master of Public Policy candidate at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government where she is concentrating in International and Global Affairs. She was born and raised in Frankfurt, Germany. After graduating from Austin College in 2004, she spent the next four years in Kyoto, Japan, where she worked first as an English teacher and then as Prefectural Advisor for the Kyoto Prefectural Board of Education. This position allowed her to explore her interest in intercultural communication and problem resolution. She recently served as Japan Coordinator for PEPY, an organization operating mostly in rural Cambodia and focusing on access to education.  Jo is fluent in English, German, French and Japanese.

Laila Kassis:

Laila is a candidate for an MBA from Harvard Business School and an MPA in International Development from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Prior to attending Harvard, Laila was a Senior Associate at Key Venture Partners, a Boston-based venture capital firm investing in growth stage information technology, communications and media companies.  In Boston, she has volunteered for the Center for Women and Enterprise coaching female entrepreneurs on business building and capital raising. After completing her studies at Harvard, Laila plans to work in international development in the Arab World. She is fluent in Arabic and learning Hebrew and French.

Tidhar Wald:

Tidhar is a first year Master of Public Policy student at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University concentrating in International and Global Affairs. Originally from Tel Aviv, Israel, he graduated from the Sorbonne University in Paris, France receiving a BA in Political Science and History. Tidhar has worked as a Journalist for several Israeli newspapers, among them “Ha’aretz”, covering International Affairs, social and cultural affairs. Prior to entering the Kennedy School, he served as the European Union Liaison Officer of the European Jewish Congress, coordinating the political actions of this NGO within the EU Institutions in Brussels and Strasbourg.  He is fluent in Hebrew, English, French and German and learns Japanese and Spanish.

Says ICO teammember Jo Aylor:

“The LendforPeace.org team, which includes both Jewish and Muslim members, and their mission to fund development through a global grassroots movement exhibit the spirit of cooperation so desperately needed in the Middle East.”

We at LendforPeace.org are excited to have the ICO team on board!

As you are well aware, the violence in the Gaza strip and southern Israel has recently escalated.  Our thoughts and prayers are with the people of both Gaza and Israel in hopes that their leaders can quickly bring about a peaceful resolution to the conflict.

The current crisis will increase the number of people who are financially and emotionally strained and has the potential to result in echoes of desperation and violence in the future. We believe that support systems in these regions are more crucial than ever and that an infrastructure for rebuilding the economies of the affected areas will be important for the success of any accord.

We at LendforPeace.org invite you to join us in investing in the future of the region.