#alleviatingpoverty

Today we hit the ground running by having a very productive first Service Learning Day.  After meeting with our panel, we jumped onto the Kiva website and continued our search for entrepreneurs to loan to.  Looking through hundreds of people in need of loans, Maddy and Connie (with Seth and Alfonso) have compiled a pretty good list of people we could pitch on behalf of.  Because there are so many people in need of loans on the Kiva website, we still have more searching to do, but our initial list is very promising.  We kept our focus on entrepreneurs trying to start or improve their businesses (as there are a lot of people in need of money for other things like tuition or books) because our service learning group’s focus is on the developing business markets and alleviating poverty through entrepreneurship.  We are in the beginning stages of finding local businesses to pitch to, but we’ve made some good connections to get us started.  Alfonso emailed Ms Murphy about the SHIP opportunities on campus this year, so that we can hopefully contact some of the companies already affiliated with Sage.  We’re waiting to hear back from the SHIP Program to see if there are businesses already involved with Sage that we can pitch to.  We’re also looking outside of Sage at the community at large to find companies to pitch to.  Seth set up the lovely blog you’re currently reading and finalized our mission statement.