Natalie Portman talks about microcredit

You know Nataile Portman from such films as the Star Wars trilogy and Closer, but she also an ambassador to FINCA International. FINCA is the Foundation for International Community Assistance, a group that provides microcredit loans to women in the under-developed world. Portman is especially interested in how microfinance can help women, and she believes it can be one of the answers in beating poverty.

As a part of a series of stories on microcredit, Radio Netherlands conducted this e-mail interview with Portman.

1. Do you think that microfinance is the answer to solving poverty?
Poverty is a complex issue for which a broad array of interventions need to be employed. Key interventions, in my opinion, include access to education, the ability for women to have control over their bodies and reproduction, access to the very basic human requirements of food, shelter and healthcare, and the means to provide financially for one's family.

When I was first researching the types of interventions that can provide the most positive outcomes for the poor, I learned that women make up 70 percent of the world’s poorest citizens. I saw that microfinance provides the world's poorest citizens, especially women, with access to capital. In doing so, they are able to take control of their lives, determine how they can best use their talent and creativity to create their own jobs, acquire the assets that will allow them to move from dependence to self-sufficiency, and ensure that their children can look forward to a better, more prosperous future.
So, while I don’t think microfinance is the only solution to poverty, I do believe it is one of the key tools that can make a huge difference in the lives of individuals, their families and their communities.

2. Who profits from microfinance?
Many people profit from microfinance. First and foremost, clients and their families profit because the added income generated by small businesses allows mothers to purchase more, and more nutritious, food. It provides the means for them to take their children to the doctor when they are ill and purchase medicine, if needed. Microentrepreneurs can improve their homes, adding a roof or another room, or a latrine. But most importantly, the added income more often than not allows children to start, or remain in school, which is the best way for them to lift themselves out of poverty as they grow.

FINCA’s client assessment research findings show that mothers use their added income to pay for their children’s school fees before they make additional improvements to the family situation. In addition, communities profit because more of their population become productive members of society, and generate revenue that can support local programs.

National governments profit because of the jobs and income generated at local levels that bolster national economies. Microfinance organizations can profit because, once their programs reach self-sustainability, the income generated can be put back into their programs, allowing them to reach more clients, more quickly with larger portfolios of loan capital.

Natalie Portman: microcredit spokesperson

Actress Natalie Portman works as an Ambassador for FINCA International, a microcredit program. Portman's role as ambassador as taken her to poverty stricken nations where FINCA makes loans. She was also the star of a documentary produced by FINCA that shows some of the success stories of their loans.

From MSNBC, Elizabeth Chang asked Portman about her work for the microcredit cause.

Question: Can you tell me about FINCA International and the Village Banking Campaign?

Portman: FINCA International provides microloans, small loans, to primarily women in developing countries to start their own businesses. It has an incredible effect on all aspects of their lives, obviously economically, but it also improves their children’s education, nutrition and health care … their shelter, and their general sense of pride and agency in themselves. The campaign is seeking to reach more and more individuals and trying to go into more remote places where you can reach really the poorest of the poor.

Q: Please describe your role as the "Ambassador of Hope" for FINCA International and co-chair of the Village Banking Campaign.

Portman: My role is primarily one as a communicator. The people who are really doing the work are the ones on the ground and the women themselves who are working so hard to create their own businesses. My job really, within the organization, is to communicate it to the public and help fundraise, occasionally talk to politicians about helping finance our programs and also how to improve them.

Q: How did you learn about microfinancing and what attracted you to the idea?

Portman: I originally got into the whole world of microfinance because I was looking into things I could do that would affect the Middle East, because I am from Israel originally. When I was looking into it, I had the great opportunity to meet Queen Rania of Jordan who is also the most, probably, high-profile Palestinian woman in the world right now, and she was the one who guided me into microfinance. She said microfinance is a way to even out the hope gap, which is what exists between the poor and the rich; this is a way to improve the status of so many people who are suffering and that’s what leads them to … that kind of despair. So, if we want to create a sort of social equilibrium, we have to create an economic equilibrium first.

Q: How can microloaning improve the lives of women, who make up a large percentage of the world’s poor?

Portman: You are very correct in saying that women and children make up 70 percent of the world’s poor, and microfinance is an incredible way to give women the tools and the access themselves to change their own destinies. That is exactly the best thing you can do, because you’re empowering women at the same time you are helping them. They really feel that they’re in control of their own futures. They don’t have to wait for someone to help them; they can create their own business, and send their children to school as opposed to having to have them work at home. The kids get better health care, they eat better, and you just see sort of all the side effects of poverty really improved by this one sort of assistance.

Celebrity spotlights global poverty

from The Daily Trojan

Natalie Portman speaks to 1,200 students about third-world microfinance.

Stephanie Harnett

Natalie Portman was on campus Friday to explain the microfinance program of a nonprofit organization that makes loans to poverty stricken citizens of third world countries.

Portman spoke in Bovard Auditorium as the Ambassador of Hope for the Foundation for International Community Assistance, which provides banking services - loans, savings and insurance - to the world's poorest entrepreneurs, giving them the opportunity to improve their standards of living. The company operates in 20 countries worldwide.

Portman has spent the last week on college campuses from UC Berkeley to UCLA raising students' awareness about FINCA's village banking program. At Friday's event, sponsored by USC Program Board and USC Global Business Leaders (Globus), Portman spoke to more than 1,200 students and faculty.

"We knew the star power Natalie Portman had would help draw the crowd," said Chris Monteverde-Talarico, the speakers director of Program Board. But he said the event was advertised primarily to business students, and a good portion of those in attendance were more interested in microfinance than in the celebrity.

Portman explained that FINCA's system of microfinance, which it calls village banking, sets up community-run banks in third-world countries with high rates of poverty. These banks make small loans - as little as $50 - to the most poverty-stricken entrepreneurs, most of whom live on $2 a day.

Portman, who has traveled to Mexico, Guatemala, Ecuador and Uganda, has witnessed the effects of village banking on third-world communities. She told the audience the story of Naima, a Ugandan woman who received a $50 loan from FINCA 10 years ago. Before the loan, Naima, a mother of 10 girls, was beaten by her husband for not having a son and lived in such poverty that she was forced to use her neighbors' dirty laundry water in her home.

When Portman visited her, Naima had grown the roadside food stand she bought with her loan into a restaurant with indoor seating and a staff of seven other women from her village. All her daughters were in school and one attended a university.

"It's incredible to see a woman who signs her loan with a thumbprint because she cannot read and her daughter graduates from medical school. [A loan] really can break the cycle of poverty in one generation," Portman said.

FINCA has already given more than 600,000 loans to the working poor, which it estimates to be more than 3 billion people and hopes to increase the number of loans to 1 million by 2015.

Portman said these loans and the economic and social mobility they provide empower their mostly female recipients.

"The most powerful thing I've seen about microfinance is the psychological impact on women. When I go into a group of women and I say, 'What's the most important thing to you today?' [They answer,] 'I put pride in myself. I have agency in my own life. I can write my own life story … I can chose my own business … My kids are proud of me,'" she said.

The majority of FINCA loan recipients are female, Portman said, because women comprise 70 percent of the world's poor. Women are also approved for the loans more often, according to the foundation, because they are more likely to invest in their children. In fact, the foundation found many loan recipients prioritize educational expenses even before the expense of buying food.

The foundation has also found that female recipients are more likely to pay back their loans; 97 percent of loans are repaid on time, a rate that FINCA calls "astounding."

Angela Sundin, a junior majoring in economics and mathematics who attended the event, said the high repayment rate isn't a surprise to her.

"It's like a kid from Compton getting a full ride to 'SC. What's he going to do? Fail out of class? Maybe- but you take that chance. Coming from a really poor background, he's probably going to want to make the most of it," she said.

Globus leaders and Marshall School of Business administrators said they backed the event because they want students to be more informed about international business practices and the cultures that influence them.

"We want to make sure that we as a business school and we as a university are truly relevant to what's happening in society," said James Ellis, dean of the school.