Pellital, runner-up of the World Summit Youth Award 2011 !

Press Release

Egyptian women fight sexual harassment

Young females win international UN competition with “HARASSmap.org” and „Girls Radio Station Only“ 

[Austria, September 2011] Engy Ghozlan and Amani Eltunsi are among the winners of the World Summit Youth Award (WSYA) 2011. Their digital ventures “HARASSmap.org” and „Girls Radio Station Only“ are directed against sexual violence and give voice to Egypt’s women, living in a male dominated society. The WSYA jury altogether selected 18 awardees from 700 submissions and 99 countries. With four winning projects coming from Egypt, the country stands at the international forefront. For the fourth time WSYA assigns digital media products from young creatives under the age of 30 who take direct action on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The women's rights activist Engy Ghozlan (HARRASSmap.org) and the radio journalist Amani Eltunsi (Girls Only Radion Station) are prized with two of four Egyptian WSYA Awards 2011 in the category „Power 2 Women“.

Women can anonymously report incidences of sexual harassment via SMS, Twitter, Email or Telephone on Harassmap.org. According to the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights 80 per cent of the female population face sexual molestation each day in Egypt. The website acts as an advocacy, prevention and response tool, highlighting the severity of abuse and offering counselling. “We are over the moon. Our initiative, consisting only of volunteers, has come so far to get United Nations’ appreciation”, co-founder Engy Ghozlan says.

Among the winners is also Adama Diop with his project Pellital Microfinance Institution coming from Senegal. Pellital is a Microfinance Institution. The goal of Pellital is to aid in alleviating the poverty through a microfinance program in Agnam-Goly, Senegal. The word Pellital means "commitment" in Fulani, the language spoken in Agnam-Goly. In this rural village, microfinance opportunities have till now not been available to most of the inhabitants. The Pellital team's objective is to assist loan recipients in the successful planning and execution of small businesses that will propel the families of Agnam-Goly out of poverty.

Over 700 young producers, designers and developers have applied for the WSYA 2011 with websites, mobile-apps and new media formats in six categories. Frontrunner Egypt (4) is followed by India (3), Mexico and France (both 2). Projects from Portugal, Germany, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal and Indonesia could each collect one award.

The World Summit Youth Award for digital content and apps has emanated from the UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). WSYA aims to activate people to implement the MDGs. The 18 winners and 15 runners-up will be honoured in Graz, Austria, from November 10^th to 13^th, 2011. Representatives from Governments, NGOs, Private Business and the United Nations will be present.

Register for the Event at www.youthaward.org

View all WSYA winners on www.youthaward.org/winners-2011

About the World Summit Youth Award (WSYA)

The WSYA selects and promotes best practice in e-content and new media, demonstrates young people’s potential to create outstanding digital content and serves as a platform for people from all UN member states in their efforts to reach the MDGs. The MDGs are eight concrete goals to eradicate poverty and inequality worldwide. They were set in 2000 by the UN and should be reached by 2015. The WSYA is organised as a follow-up activity of the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) and takes place in 2011 for the fourth time after 2005, 2009 and 2010. The WSYA team is based at the International Center for New Media (ICNM) in Salzburg, Austria. WSYA is supported by the UN Global Alliance for ICT & Development (UN GAID), the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Internet Society (ISOC), INTEL, the Telfree Group, the Fundação para as Comunicações Móveis (FCM) and the Layla Fakhro Foundation.

For more information visit:

www.youthaward.org | www.facebook.com/youthaward | www.twitter.com/youthaward

Or contact:

The official contact at WSYA office is Andrea Thuma: thuma@icnm.net

All WSYA 2011 categories and winners:

Category 1: Fight Poverty, Hunger and Disease!

	Project Title / URL	Country	Producer
Winner	MDG's Campus Challenge www.odmcampuschallenge.org.pt/	Portugal	Sara Dias
Winner	Kherna www.kherna.com	Egypt	Amira Salah
Winner	Maternal Mortality www.maternalmortalityportal.org	Ghana	Ojo Alexander Titiloye
Runners-Up: Pellital Microfinance Institution (www.pellital.org), Adama Diop, Senegal, Hopeland, South Africa, Wardi Souhaïl

Category 2: Education for All!

	Project Title / URL	Country	Producer
Winner	iko, the pupil's best friend http://en.projet-iko.com/	France	Arnaud Tanielian
Winner	Education Generation www.educationgeneration.org	Canada	Eileen Knowles
Winner	Make A Difference http://makeadiff.in	India	Krishnan Jithin
Runners-Up: Maternal Mortality, Pakistan, Bachal Humaira Lahore International Children's Film Festival,  Sweden, Mushtaq Zubair The Gateway to Education in Nepal, Nepal, Tankeshwar Acharya

Categorie 3: Power 2 Women!

	Project Title / URL	Country	Producer
Winner	Bell Bajao! (Ring the Bell) www.bellbajao.org	India	Engy Ghozlan
Winner	Harassmap http://harassmap.org	Egypt	Engy Ghozlan
Winner	Girls Only Radion Station www.banat9bass.com	Egypt	Amani Eltunsi
Runners-Up:  My Country My Village, Bangladesh, Rahman Ataur Think With Me, UK, Machirori Fungai Contraception - it´s our choice, Macedonia, Daniel Kalajdjieski

Category 4: Create your Culture!

	Projekt Titel / URL	Land	Producer
Winner	The Global Experience www.solarnet.tv	Germany	Carina Schmid
Winner	Play my Jamz www.playmyjamz.com	Nigeria	Akinyele Olubodun
Winner	Mashallah News http://mashallahnews.com	France	Clément Girardot
Runners-Up: YoungDads.TV, UK, Christy McAleese The Voice of Youth, Pakistan, Mushtaq Momal

Category 5: Go Green!

	Project Title / URL	Country	Producer
Winner	Friends of the Nature www.sahabat-alam.com/en	Indonesia	Adeline Tiffanie Suwana
Winner	Aventones www.aventones.com	Mexico	Cristina Palacios Goddard
Winner	Ilumexico http://ilumexico.mx/	Mexico	Mariana Astrid González Pacheco
Runners-Up: eMazingira Enviromental Campaign, Kenya, Machoka Dunstan Dexters for Earth: Lets GREEN the BLUES, India, Sagar Sharad Vivek End Kerosene Generation - 1 milion Solar Laterns, Nigeria, Oye Femi

Category 6: Pursue Truth!

	Project Title / URL	Country	Producer
Winner	Write3 www.write3.com	Bangladesh	Khan Suny Md Ashraf
Winner	Zabatak the anti-crime, anti-corruption initiative http://zabatak.com	Egypt	Abbas Ibrahim
Winner	The Voice of the Youth http://theviewspaper.net	India	Bhaskar Dravid Shiv
Runners-Up: ONE2ONE, Kenya, Kibutha Annrose Developing Pictures, USA, Pritz John

Pellital Financial Report as of February 2011

Dear friends,

Pellital's financial report as of february 2011 is now available through our website at the 'Our Database' section: http://www.pellital.org/ Please feel free to download and share the document.

Thank you all for your continued support to Pellital!

Introducing our intern: Taylor Hausburg (Duke university, USA)

Pellital has got an intern who will be working with the micro-entrepreneurs this summer and posting here some fresh updates about their small businesses. Here is her comment:

“My name is Taylor Hausburg, and I am currently a junior at Duke University majoring in Linguistics.  I am in a class this semester that deals with border-crossing (or leadership) issues and community-based research.  As part of that course, we are eligible for a grant from the university to fund a project of our own for this upcoming summer.  I was alerted to the Pellital organization by Omar Diaw (whom I met through my Arabic professor Mbaye Lo), and was immediately drawn to your project.  I am personally interested in women's rights, and, though I have never worked with microfinance companies in the past, would absolutely love the opportunity to learn more about the process.  I also speak French fluently (though not perfectly, and I do not know any Fulani).

The purpose of the grant is not only for us to organize a meaningful and interesting summer project, but also for us students to give something back to the organization with which we work.  The projects last 8-12 weeks, beginning in mid- to late May and ending in mid-August.  We are provided $4,000 for the summer, and so I would NOT be asking for any payment from your organization.  I would be willing to conduct any research for you that might be beneficial to Pellital.  

To give you an example, students who have volunteered with microcredit organizations in the past have interviewed loan recipients in order to write a paper that would help promote the organization and its fundraising efforts.

I am particularly interested in the women's empowerment aspect and potential of microfinance.  So, I have two major ideas for the project options at the moment, or even a combination of the two:
     a. Compiling several case studies of women who have successfully utilized their loans and descriptions of their businesses, since studies have shown that the most powerful way to motivate people is to have them read success stories of people with similar backgrounds as their own.   
     b. Exploring if and how women who have successfully utilized their loans mentor other women in their community, especially those interested in applying for loans.  If this sort of system does not exist, then I would like to explore the possibility of establishing a mentoring network.

I would be honored to work with such an inspiring and motivated community.”

Pellital featured on the Winnipeg free Press

Winnipeg Free Press -

Keep up the good works

Microfinance lenders help working poor help themselves

By: Joel Schlesinger

Carole Marshall knows $25 won't change the world. But in a remote village in western Africa, it might make a world of difference for a struggling entrepreneur.

Marshall isn't giving the money away. She's lending it to small business owners in the developing world with the help of a one-year-old community development project at the University of Winnipeg called Smarter Village.

"I'm an entrepreneur, so that's why this program appealed to me," says Marshall, owner of marketing firm Lynx Communications.

"I know how hard it is to get started when launching a business and it's hard no matter where in the world you are."

While it is indeed tough all over for entrepreneurs starting out, launching a business is an almost impossible task for the hundreds of millions of working poor around the globe. Despite adversity, they manage to do just that, only to find their economic prospects severely limited because of one major obstacle: access to credit. Although many poor entrepreneurs often require less than $500 in capital, they are unable to get loans from banks because they have no collateral and the loans are too small to be profitable for traditional financial institutions. That's where microfinance has stepped in to fill the financing gap, providing small loans to poor entrepreneurs to grow their businesses, create jobs and develop their local economies.

And more Canadians -- such as Marshall -- are looking at providing the loans as another means to help the less fortunate, besides the well-travelled route of charitable giving.

"The best thing about this is the money goes to a community and multiplies itself many times over," says Karen Keppler, a University of Winnipeg business instructor who helped launch the Pellital microbank part of the Smarter Village project.

"You put in $65 and that person can start a business that will maybe create a couple of other jobs."

The Pellital microbank and the Smarter Village project are the brainchild of Adama Diop, a Senegalese exchange student who contacted Keppler through her community development Facebook page. Now living in Montreal, Diop spent a year attending the U of W where, with the help of Keppler, he created a website where people could lend small amounts of money to mostly women entrepreneurs in Agnam-Goly, a village in northwestern Senegal.

Although the concept may be new to many people in the developed world, microfinance has been around for about 30 years, Keppler says.

The world's best-known microfinance project started in the 1970s. At the time, Muhammad Yunus, a Bangladeshi economist, realized the working poor could not improve their lives without access to credit, so he helped found the Grameen Bank. The bank provided small loans to poor Bangladeshi entrepreneurs and, although they had no access to collateral, they turned out to be reliable borrowers.

About 98 per cent of those who borrowed money through microfinance repaid their loans. As a result of Grameen's success, microfinance spread throughout the developing world and Yunus and the bank won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.

But the Grameen Bank wasn't the only microfinance pioneer. Other not-for-profit microloan institutions have also been providing access to credit for the world's poor for a number of years.

FINCA, founded by two former members of the U.S. Peace Corps, has helped provide more than 750,000 loans to entrepreneurs in more than 23 countries for more than two decades. FINCA's model is somewhat different than other microfinance organizations. For one, it is a registered charity and people give money away, unlike Pellital and other larger organizations -- like Kiva, an online microloan provider -- that lend the money.

FINCA donors receive a tax receipt for their contributions, but do not receive their money back like they would with other microfinance organizations.

Instead, their donations contribute to a pool of capital that is distributed to a network of village banks around the world that handle the loans locally, says Mike Green, who sits on FINCA's board and helped launch the Canadian branch in November.

When a loan gets repaid, the funds are returned to the village bank's capital reserves where they can be lent to other entrepreneurs. While some microloan organizations charge no interest or only a small amount to cover processing costs, FINCA loans have interest charges, often at higher rates than those offered by banks in the region.

"That's the only way to keep it going," Green says, adding the rate is much lower than those offered by loan sharks, usually the alternative to banks for poor people in need of credit. By providing the village bank with a source of income from interest payments, the bank can directly create jobs (loan officers and bank clerks) and it becomes an autonomous financial institution, managed by villagers for villagers. "We don't decide (who gets a loan). They decide. Twenty women gather at the village bank and you can't get into that village bank without an invitation from the other women," says Green, a software entrepreneur who volunteers his time with FINCA.

"They vet themselves and FINCA doesn't worry whether it's a great business idea or not. If the other women say they trust this (entrepreneur), that's good enough." And while Canadians can now donate rather than lend money, tax savings are likely the last reason people would give to FINCA.

"The underlying subtext is alleviating poverty. It gives people a hand up," says Green. "They pull themselves out."

Who are the working poor?

While most people understand the phrase refers to individuals and their families who earn an income that's too low to escape poverty, the criteria vary from nation to nation. The U.S.-based, non-governmental organization (NGO) Corporation for Enterprise Development provides microloans to American families and defines the working poor as people and their families who work at least part-time and fall below the poverty line. But the poverty line also changes in each country. In Canada, for instance, there is no official poverty line. Instead, Statistics Canada provides a low-income cut-off measurement. Families that spend 20 per cent more of their gross income than average Canadian families on essential expenses such as food, shelter and utilities are below the cut-off.

In the developing world, clean water, electricity, health care and other essential services are often unavailable to large portions of the population, so the definition of working poor is much different. According to the World Bank's development indicators issued in 2008, more than five billion people live on less than $10 a day. About half live on less than $2 a day. Those numbers may sound low enough, but in a New York Times article published in September, the UN defined the working poor as those earning less than $1.25 a day.

Microfinance organizations

Several microfinance institutions provide small loans and other financial services around the world to individuals who are too poor to qualify for traditional banking. Here's a look at three organizations, all using slightly different models.

Kiva: An online community that allows individual lenders to provide small loans to struggling entrepreneurs in the developing world. Kiva works with field partners, various microbanks around the world. These institutions vet the entrepreneurs seeking loans and upload qualified borrowers to the website to find lenders. The average loan to borrowers is about $402 and the average amount of money lent by lenders is $175.

-- www.kiva.org

FINCA: This NGO provides banking services to the world's lowest-income earning entrepreneurs. Using donations, FINCA International provides $5,000 capital each to small micro-lending institutions called village banks. A typical village bank consists of 20, mostly women, entrepreneurs in need of financing to build their businesses. Because these individuals have no collateral, all members of the group guarantee the loans. In addition to loans, microbanks provide other financial services such as savings and insurance. As the loans get repaid with interest, the banks can grow, providing loans to more entrepreneurs in need, as well as expanding services.

-- www.fincacanada.org

Pellital: A microfinance lending institution set up by University of Winnipeg student Adama Diop to provide small loans to entrepreneurs in Agnam-Goly, Senegal. The Pellital village bank is one of many initiatives of the Smarter Village project, aimed at developing social and economic infrastructure in Agnam-Goly. Karen Keppler is the director of innovation at the Virtual Business Innovation Centre, a joint initiative of the U of W and the Aboriginal Business Development Centre, and she helped Diop develop the Smarter Village project.

-- vbic.squarespace.com/pellitals/

Microfinance in the developed world:

A microloan in Africa is much different than one in Canada. While a $65 loan to an entrepreneur in Senegal can help her business tremendously, an entrepreneur starting out in Canada requires about $30,000, says Nigel Mohammed, manager of community services at Assiniboine Credit Union, one of a handful of financial institutions offering microloans to Canadians.

"With small, microbusinesses, a lot of institutions find that it's too much time and work with not enough profitability to manage a portfolio of $30,000 loans," says Mohammed, who manages Assiniboine's microloan portfolio.

To streamline the process and reduce costs, most institutions provide loans to individuals based on their credit scores alone. But with a microfinance mandate, Mohammed looks at the viability of the business instead. "We look at the business plan for a start-up or financial statements for an existing business and we're able to make a decision -- yes, we can give you credit, or no we can't -- based on our determination of the viability of the business."

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition December 19, 2009 B14

A great initiative to support Pellital's endeavours by the undergrad Net Impact club at Cornell

The Sustainable Enterprise Association (SEA), the undergrad Net Impact club at Cornell, is hosting a fundraiser/social event this Thursday, November 12, the first night of the 2009 Net Impact Conference!

The goal of our club, and the conference, is to bring together students who believe in the power of business to create a more socially and environmentally sustainable world. We are also raising money for a non-profit microfinance organization called Pellital, which reaches out to entrepreneurial women in rural Senegal who do not have access to any other financial services (www.pellital.org).

Come have a drink and donate to this great cause!

When: Thursday 11/12 8:00-10:00PM
Where: Dino's (18 and over!)
Cost: $5 gets anyone 1/2 price appetizers and those 21+ $1 Bud/Bud Light and $4 themed mix drinks
Why: Meet other people interested in sustainable business and support a great microfinance institution.

Co-hosted by: Delta Sigma Pi, Microfinance Club, Fistula Free Climb and Social Business Consulting Group

If you are at Cornell university, you can join to this event: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/event.php?eid=170524570678&ref=mf

Thank,