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We will divide our fundraising efforts into three categories. Outreach as it relates to fundraising includes placing information about AguaClara in places where potential donors can see it such as with the Cornell Annual Fund. Contacts means actively exploring personal and professional relationships to help us find potential donors. Grant applications and direct solicitations includes the actual requests for money. This step epitomizes the phrase "one who does not cry gets no milk." We need to raise money for construction of plants in Honduras, research and design work at Cornell and to send AguaClara engineers to Honduras to help train and educate Hondurans on water treatment process.
Microfinance
What is Microcredit?
The provision of small loans or microcredit to poor people to help them engage in productive activities including growth of very small businesses is called Microcredit. The term may also include a broader range of services, including credit, savings, and insurance.
Organizations that currently offer Microcredit in Honduras?
Name Website
Adelante http://www.adelantefoundation.org/
Finca Honduras http://www.villagebanking.org
Finsol http://www.finsolhn.com/
Fundahmicro http://www.fundahmicro.hn/fundahmicro/
FUNED http://www.funedvf.org/ingles/
ODEF http://www.odef.org.hn/
Worldrelief https://community.wr.org/SSLPage.aspx?pid=609
Microcredit projects that already exist in Central America
In general Microcredit projects can range anything between lending to an individual to implementing a project which would help the whole community at large (generally with the aid of the government or a Non-governmental charitable institution). The current Microcredit projects in Central America are mainly concentrated on Small size businesses. Microcredit in Central America has been growing at a steady pace of 20% in the last decade with Honduras among the lower end of growth spectrum.
How Microcredit works?
All the Microfinance organizations in Honduras seem to follow the Grameen model for lending purposes, in this model an organization assigns a number of officers to a community to familiarize with the situations on ground and gather loan applications. Once the loan applications are reviewed they decide on potential borrowers (usually the limit is 5 people) and form a group of with all them as members. Then they give money to 2 members of the group (the loan could range from anything between $50 to $5000) and monitor repayments for a two year period. If the two borrowers do return the money on time they extend the loans to everybody else in the group, this dynamics creates a peer pressure among the borrowers to make payments on time.
How Microcredit can be used to help AguaClara?
The best way would be to convince different villages in Honduras to form commercial Water boards and use them as representatives to apply for the Microcredit loans in lieu for paybacks based on the collection of water taxes from each individual family in the village. Since many of the Honduras villages already have a water board and most of them keep tax records it would be easier for the Microcredit institution to verify their credit worthiness and provide them the initial investment required to build the water treatment plant and pay the AguaClara/APP employees working on the project.
Outreach
The Cornell Annual Fund plans on including information about AguaClara in their mailings and hopefully we can get a link about AguaClara on the Cornell Fund website. Other ideas for outreach for fundraising purposes includes posters on campus and continued contact with previous donors.
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