Guest blog | Design is Political interview with Head of Lendwithcare Tracey Horner

This microfinance platform is helping some of the world's poorest people

This interview was originally posted on the Design is Political website here and has been reproduced here with their permission.

©Peter Caton

Lendwithcare helps people work their way out of poverty. The online platform allows users to make microloans (as small as £15) to those in some of the poorest parts of the world, who invest in building their businesses and improving their lives. We caught up with Tracey Horner, the woman behind the project, to find out more…

Guest blog | Tanglin Trust Junior School raise over $6,000 for Lendwithcare entrepreneurs!

As you know, through Lendwithcare lenders can support poor entrepreneurs around the world with a small loan, enabling them to start and grow their own business, and work their own way out of poverty for them and their families.

You may not be aware that it is also a fantastic tool to engage children of all ages in a wide range of topics such as global poverty, overseas aid, personal finance and entrepreneurship.

One of our biggest school supporters is the Tanglin Trust Junior School in Singapore, who have chosen Lendwithcare as their school charity project. Each class at the Tanglin Trust has their own Lendwithcare account, so the students can keep track of their own fundraising, and choose and debate in class which entrepreneurs they want to support.

Recently Tanglin Trust held a whole week of activities to raise funds to lend in class to Lendwithcare entrepreneurs, and raised an incredible $6,000!

Tanglin Trust Year 3 class

RubyMoon lends 100% of its profits to Lendwithcare women entrepreneurs

Lendwithcare now has a community of over 33,000 lenders, supporting over 45,000 entrepreneurs around the world.

One lender is ethical swimwear company RubyMoon, who uses 100% of their net profits to lend to women entrepreneurs through Lendwithcare. RubyMoon has been lending for 5 years, and so far has made 179 loans to women entrepreneurs and entrepreneur groups. We got in touch with founder Jo to find out more about why she wanted to involve RubyMoon in Lendwithcare, and her lending story so far.

Jo, founder of RubyMoon

The new Lendwithcare website - a lender perspective

I’ve been using the old Lendwithcare website since 2013, and although I didn’t have any major problems with it there were signs it was starting to show its age, having been originally launched back in 2010. It was great to discover it was going to be getting a lick of paint, as well incorporating some other changes suggested by existing lenders, and so I jumped at the chance to kick the tyres on the new site before it launched.
 

Behind the scene shots of the website redesign process

Lendwithcare News: The launch of our new and improved Lendwithcare website

From early April (assuming everything goes to plan!), when you visit the Lendwithcare website you will be presented with the new and hugely improved version of the site.

Screenshot of the 'new visitor' homepage

The initial motivation behind making changes to the current website was to make it a lot easier for lenders to use on mobile devices. We noticed that over 50% of our lenders were accessing the website either on their mobile phone or tablet and yet the current website made it very difficult for them to read about our entrepreneurs, make loans or purchase gift vouchers. However, as the project developed (and after some market research among lenders) it became obvious that we also needed to use this opportunity to enhance some of the site’s features to improve user experience for both new people coming to the site and for existing lenders.

Crowdfunding: A Cure to the World's Social Problems?

This blog was written by Lendwithcare lender, Jan Tchamani, and originally posted on DuCredit's website. It has been re-posted here with permission.

 

The Chitimba Women's Group, supported by Jan through Lendwithcare

Crowdfunding activity has been on the rise for a few years. With the rise of Kickstarter and other platforms, no sector benefits more fruitfully from crowd funding initiatives than the 3rd sector.

Micro-finance initiatives allow anyone to invest small amounts of money which make a huge difference to entrepreneurs and workers in the third world. Allowing them to provide a sustainable future for their families.

We asked one UK based donor, Jan Tchamani, one of AgeUK’s current internet champions, why she chose to give through crowdfunding and tell us a little about her experience of charitable giving through LendWithCare.