Political Quotes

“This is a neat, wonderful concept, and it is something that we can agree on, which also says a lot as well. We ought to be looking for more of these ideas. It is a testament to the strength of the human spirit, this program. It has taught a couple of things. One is that poor people would much rather that we give them loans than grants, that we have confidence in their ability to pay money back, that all they really need is a little seed money to get started. The second thing it teaches us is that the most underused economic resource in this world are the women of the world who have always been doing most of the work but very seldom have they ever had any real control, particularly economic control, over their lives. So the programs that work are the ones that go out and find the women in the villages that know what is going on and have the fortitude and the determination to provide for their families and give them the resources. Boy, the ideas that they come up with and the kind of effort that they put into these little microenterprise efforts, they are just heartwarming.”