Luis Balaguerde LatinWE
Luis Balaguer from LatinWE announced in an exclusive interview for PRODU, that he launched, together with Sofía Vergara and through Kiva.org, a US$50 million fund to help alleviate the COVID-19 crisis and help microentrepreneurs.
The fund was launched a week ago. “This last week, we have been able to collect over US$10 million. Our goal is to reach US$50 million in the next two months. I hope we exceed that, and we are truly giving money to microentrepreneurs worldwide, but focused much more on Latin America and the US, and particularly businesses that belong to or are related with women”.
He informed and thanked eBay, that donated on Tuesday, May 19, US$2 million to the fund, and Hitachi, which contributed US$1 million.
“We will be reporting the fund´s progress weekly, and the people who are receiving the money so there truly is an impact. What we want is to teach people how to fish, instead of giving them the fish.”
They chose Kiva because it is the biggest microloan company that in the last 15 years has distributed more than US$1.4 billion. “That is why we chose them precisely, because we wanted to make sure that if we were going to gather money quickly, the most important thing was to put the money in the hands of those entrepreneurs as fast as possible, and Kiva gives us that possibility”.
Everybody can apply to the fund through www.kiva.org.
Watch Luis Balaguer giving PRODU the breaking news on the fund
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