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| Photo Katia Roberts |
Many 24 year-olds would have misgivings about saying goodbye to everything in their lives and moving to India, but for Anna Wilson, the opportunity to work closely with impoverished people is motivation enough. Wilson works for Unitus, a Seattle area non-profit that is dedicated to furthering microfinance development work around the world. Microfinance is the practice of giving small loans, as little as $95, to entrepreneurs in developing countries in order to allow them to create self-sustaining businesses.
“Microfinance is especially empowering,” she says, “when you consider that most microfinance loans go to women in countries where women usually have a very small stake in the economy.”
Inspired by this vision, Wilson is moving to Bangalore to help coordinate an office there. “The genius of microfinance,” Wilson says, “is that it is based on the idea that poor people already have all the skills and all the work ethic they need to be successful: they simply lack access to capital.”
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