“Think of all the informal mechanisms – from savings groups to small loans from family – that underserved people use to meet their financial needs. It’s easy to assume that these tools are the last resorts of people who lack access to formal finance.”
by James Militzer
“Dream 2015 proposes a number of practical solutions to a problem that clearly plays a major role in growing poverty and income inequality. Among other potential solutions, they propose…Strengthening public-private partnerships such as Bank On and Lending Circles that provide microlending services to communities of color.”
by Stuart Jeanne Bramhall
Predatory lenders continue to target poor, Black and Latino communities, siphoning off $103 billion in fees and interests every year, and the rest of us are paying for it, according to a recent report by United for a Fair Economy.
by: Freddie Allen
Teofila Richardson is essentially a community banker, although you’d never guess it as she hustles between jobs as a housecleaner at local nursing home and for residents around the city.
by: Deirdre Fernandes
Four Asian American-Pacific Islander (AAPI) community-based organizations — in Minnesota, Ohio, Georgia, and Hawaii — will be expanding a national network of organizations offering Lending Circles, also called rotating credit and savings associations, thanks to a grant from the National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development (National CAPACD), putting a traditional practice into wider modern circulation.
by Frances Kai-Hwa Wang
IT was a slow afternoon at Check Center, the check casher/payday lender in a storefront on a busy corner in downtown Berkeley, Calif., where I worked as a teller. My manager, Joe, and I were both dressed in red polo shirts embroidered with the Check Center logo. Joe took advantage of the lull to tell me how to sell prepaid cards — reloadable cash cards that operate like debit cards but aren’t linked to a bank account — to customers.’
by: Lisa Servon
Two years ago, Javiar Giron went bankrupt. The 46-year-old father of three had been doing fine since he came to the U.S. in 1985: He learned English on the street, bought a house and managed a carpet business. He began buying and selling, or “flipping,” houses on the side, but that tanked with the housing market and he lost two of his properties to banks.
by: Teddy Nykiel
Ximena Arias de la Organización Comunitaria “Mission Asset Fund” explica los detalles de un evento para organizar sus finanzas.
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) — A traditional form of peer-to-peer lending that’s been practiced in other countries for centuries is helping Californians meet their financial goals – and build credit at the same time.
“Shweta Kohli has always paid her own way. Her straight-A average won her a full scholarship to San Francisco State University at the same time she worked a 40-hour week as a waitress at a cafe. But when she applied for a credit card after graduation, she was turned down because she had no credit history”.
by: Patricia Cohen