Comments on: Opportunity Indeed — Day 11 http://malcolmmarler.com/opportunity/ a chaplain creating connection and community with the human family and God Mon, 30 Jan 2012 18:53:27 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Andrew http://malcolmmarler.com/opportunity/comment-page-1/#comment-448 Andrew Tue, 02 Mar 2010 21:37:51 +0000 http://malcolmmarler.com/?p=2025#comment-448 Malcom, Thanks for writing this series on living more simply. This is something that we are all challenged with living in the developed world; fast paced lives, distractions from the truly important, easy fixes everywhere and little time devoted to the Sabbath. I was struck by this quote from your post on day two: "It is about understanding that happiness through owning stuff is limited, and our peace, joy, and inherent value comes from God." This is such an inherent truth, yet one that I struggle to remember in the face of everyday life. Our vision for OptINnow.org was "how can we communicate and provide a place for the masses to experience and/or see the life changing work that micro-finance is having in the developing world?" We decided that the most impact-full way to engage the public is to simply tell our entrepreneurs stories. Tell the story of their life, business, family, and education. As our entrepreneurs stories come to life, we wanted to provide a way for users, if they feel compelled, to donate and help provide the entrepreneur with their loan. The minimal donation amount on OptINnow is $25 (the average loan for an entrepreneur is approx. $300)and all donors receive 2 updates throughout the entrepreneur's repayment cycle. Each update is designed to communicate to the donor how the entrepreneur is doing, how their business is doing, where the loan when and how their family has been impacted by it. The second update communicates this as well as whether the loan has been repaid or been defaulted on. I encourage you to visit the site and read about the impact that micro-finance is having in the developing world. Please do not hesitate to contact me with any questions at all, I am happy to help answer them. Thanks for the support, and more importantly for your thoughtful examination of a simplistic life. Warm Regards, Andrew Koehler Akoehler@opportunity.org Malcom,
Thanks for writing this series on living more simply. This is something that we are all challenged with living in the developed world; fast paced lives, distractions from the truly important, easy fixes everywhere and little time devoted to the Sabbath. I was struck by this quote from your post on day two: “It is about understanding that happiness through owning stuff is limited, and our peace, joy, and inherent value comes from God.” This is such an inherent truth, yet one that I struggle to remember in the face of everyday life.

Our vision for OptINnow.org was “how can we communicate and provide a place for the masses to experience and/or see the life changing work that micro-finance is having in the developing world?” We decided that the most impact-full way to engage the public is to simply tell our entrepreneurs stories. Tell the story of their life, business, family, and education. As our entrepreneurs stories come to life, we wanted to provide a way for users, if they feel compelled, to donate and help provide the entrepreneur with their loan.

The minimal donation amount on OptINnow is $25 (the average loan for an entrepreneur is approx. $300)and all donors receive 2 updates throughout the entrepreneur’s repayment cycle. Each update is designed to communicate to the donor how the entrepreneur is doing, how their business is doing, where the loan when and how their family has been impacted by it. The second update communicates this as well as whether the loan has been repaid or been defaulted on.

I encourage you to visit the site and read about the impact that micro-finance is having in the developing world. Please do not hesitate to contact me with any questions at all, I am happy to help answer them. Thanks for the support, and more importantly for your thoughtful examination of a simplistic life.

Warm Regards,
Andrew Koehler

Akoehler@opportunity.org

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