Microfinance and Small and Medium Enterprise (SME)
Global Bridge Foundation is reaching out to the community that's not being served currently through microfinance or small and medium business enterprises in third world countries.
We are reaching to the people who have a reasonably good chance of business success which would most often require a condensed community, that could receive training to increase the likelihood of self sufficiency, and also prioritize work projects that create immediate benefit including agriculture, medical support and create improved shelter.
This group of people is not currently being served because they don't have the skill set to easily qualify for those organizations. Most of these groups are adjacent to micro-finance communities because it assists in capitalizing on the business expertise in the micro-finance community, and there is improved trust based on the success of the existing neighbors in the idea of developing improved livelihoods.
We are funding new enterprises that are bringing services of agriculture, water quality, housing development, or medical services to these communities. Our priority also includes joining in this endeavor with as many partners as possible that have similar goals.
The vision is finding approximately 5-10 projects that are somewhere around $100,000 each and start a SME business enterprise, where we bring in someone who knows how to plant soybeans, create a shelter, or pharmacy expertise, do the training, pay for the infrastructure of the funds that it takes to start the enterprise with the goal being that the principle amount would be paid back within 5-7 years. (We could add that we would be approaching other foundations to match our grants, and hopefully the $100,000 would be increase many fold) Ideally we would like to make 1-2% on our money just to demonstrate that not only could these projects be done in a way that's creating profit, and creating a beneficial service, but even the donating source can make a little bit of money.
