Brendan Martin - Ashoka Globalizer Fellow

Brendan Martin
Organization: The Working World
Country: Argentina

Brendan Martin's organization, The Working World, is pioneering techniques to radically increase the impact of investment credit to the poor. Brendan's program incorporates innovations including: investment-style loans, credit to mid-sized businesses in poor areas, a nimble business-planning approach called "just-in-time-credit", risk-sharing with zero debt creation, and the nurturing of democratically run businesses and cooperatives. Together called "micro-venture capitalism", the aim is to leverage the impact of credit to the poor to ensure consistent and meaningful local wealth creation from the ground up.

The Working World was launched in Argentina in 2005 to begin working with people trying to rebuild after the Argentine economic collapse. Beginning in that first year with only 14 investments with a value of $50,000, the project has now made over 470 investments totaling almost $2 million and has created projects for over 9,000 business owners and workers. A second branch was opened in Nicaragua in 2009, and another is currently being started in New York City. Throughout the history of the project, 98% of investments have come to maturity and paid themselves off, and zero debt has been created.

In the changing economy of the 21st century, large, top-down economic projects have not proven as successful as in the past, leaving many development experts to look to small, local growth to fill the gap. This is true both in the developing world, where poverty has stubbornly failed to abate, and in the developed world where wages have largely stagnated. There is estimated to be 2 billion people worldwide who could use microcredit to grow their way out of poverty, and while the microcredit industry has grown substantially, it has not been accompanied by an equal growth in the sophistication of its practices. The goal of The Working World is to innovate and test methods that can be used by the entire industry to reach those 2 billion people and effectively create real wealth where it's needed.

To achieve this goal of advancing the microcredit industry in its scope and impact, Brendan has begun putting in place a two-pronged strategy. The first includes solidifying The Working World's innovations by scaling both horizontally, to further vet new techniques in different economic contexts, and vertically, to raise a larger fund that can further innovate with bigger investments with an even deeper impact. The second pillar of the scaling strategy is to codify and share proven innovations of The Working World through open-source access to its records and a forthcoming handbook which would allow organizations with similar goals to borrow, replicate, and perhaps improve on The Working World experience. The result will be a battery of financing methods that have been rigorously proven in different contexts, ready to be used by any organization aiming to enable the poor to grow their own way out of poverty.

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• Ashoka Globalizer