One of my favorite quotes in the world is by Margaret Mead.  She said, “Never underestimate the ability of a small group of committed individuals to change the world. Indeed, they are the only ones who ever have.”

Last week, Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus came to help MicroPlace celebrate our first anniversary.  One of the messages he really brought home is how special microfinance investors are as a community.  Check out this video.

So for all you MicroPlace investors who felt like you were the only ones in the world who cared about making an investment that helps, now you know.  You are not alone.  There is a community, albeit small, of committed individuals who are there with you working to change the world.  And indeed we are.  26,000 loans have been enabled by you to date, and we are just starting.

His entire talk can be found here but I pulled out my favorite clip from the talk and it is below.  This is the part where he talk about how a microloan, although just a few dollars to you and me, is about so much more than a loan to a borrower.  It is about the transformation that comes through the empowerment it provides.  Enjoy.  And try not to get misty eyed.

And of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t show you a couple of clips from after he finished the talk and then cut the birthday cake. 

Some folks who were there put up their photos and you can find them here and here.  If you have any photos, feel free to post them in the comments section. 

In all, we would like to thank all the investors, those who made it to our celebration party and those who could not.  Without you, the investors, we would be able to accomplish nothing.

Yesterday was MicroPlace’s one year anniversary celebration and we want to thank all the investors who came and celebrated with us.  I’ll have some more information and some video of the event soon, but in the meantime, here is a photo of Professor Yunus cutting the cake.

For more photos, see eBayInk’s photo stream here.

Thank you to all our investors who made this possible!

MicroPlace has a heck of a lot of options out there for where to focus your dollars to enable a loan.  Fantastic, no?  But how do you choose between helping women in Ghana and helping women in Cambodia?  All these choices can be a little overwhelming, no?

Well, no need to make that decision any more (pfew – if you’re like me, that leaves only 39,273 decisions left for today).   MicroPlace has introduced a couple of investments which, are great if you are passionate about an issue that cannot be confined by mere geo-political boundaries.  We are adding more all the time, but we currently have four: (more…)

We sometimes get questions along the lines of why the heck is eBay interested in microfinance.  I mean, isn’t eBay all about Pez dispensers and collectable figurines?  Why does eBay care enough about really poor people working their way out of poverty to provide the patient capital needed to get MicroPlace off the ground?

Well, the answer is that eBay isn’t as passionate about Pez dispensers (though they are quite cool…) as it is about empowering the everyday person by leveling the playing field and giving them access to the market.  And right now, microfinance is a bit of a murky market that would benefit a lot from that efficient market power thing.

Tracey Pettengill Turner, MicroPlace founder spoke recently at a conference on this very subject:

Things are getting exciting over here at MicroPlace and it’s not just the Nov 4 election that has people revved up.  We’re turning one year old this month and wow, what a ride it’s been.  In our first year, you believed enough in the power of microfinance and MicroPlace to enable over 26,000 loans to hard working poor people across the globe.  Holy cow.  Talk about folks putting their money where their mouth is (or should we say their PayPal account where their principles are?)  That also means that MicroPlace, in its first year of business, grew faster than any other consumer microfinance site IN THE WHOLE ENTIRE WORLD did.

Double holy cow.

So, we’re excited.  And we’re celebrating.  And we’re throwing a party. 

And guess who’s coming to our party?  Muhammad Yunus, 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner and father of microfinance!  Do you think he will sign my baseball cap?  Do you? Do you? (more…)

When you have something new, one of the challenges is that it is, well, new.  I remember the first time I saw the public internet, way back in 1994.  When I went to check out this new thing called the world wide web, it was nothing more than a couple of companies who had posted some brochure type pages with their phone number. And I thought, “well, that’s not very useful.”  I mean email I got and loved, but this new thing, this web with its funny http://www, seemed, well, I just didn’t get it. 

And today? I cannot even imagine how I even survived before the internet existed.  (more…)