CRS & Savings-led Loan Programs

Catholic Relief Services (CRS) uses "Savings-led" microfinance to advance their mission.  Now one would assume only savings could be lent, but after the bankers discovered they could get away with lending credit, not savings, and also be bailed out when it inevitably failed, this new thing is so widespread that what is normal must be stipulated: savings-led lending.

That's why it's called internal savings and internal lending. It's internal to this group. You don't have to deal with that massive interest rate, you just pool your money and the groups set the rules for lending themselves.
Sometimes you can choose to lend to someone outside of the circle. There is actually an encouragement to lend the money out, because that's how you make investments. By charging a modest interest, you could make a profit.

So they are halfway there... actually lending something, and not far to go really.  "You could" charge interest is scandalous, since it proposes people sin, but CRS is a USA Catholic gig where some 94% of Catholics reject church teaching on birth control, and so what if 99.9% reject church teaching on usury? But "you could" is far away from what NObel laureate Yunus requires, you must, plus turn over your culture to Yunus's henchmen.  (The Nobel prize in Economics is actually a banking prize administered by the Nobel committee, Nobel never funded such a prize, so prizewinners are usually pro-predatory systems.)

The article does have a funny line about a start-up baker:

They sold out everything in one week. It was that popular. They sold cakes to the local police department, so the idea that police love donuts is a global thing. The leader of the group lost a child to starvation before this enterprise.

Loans are always charitable events in a comity.  To charge interest has always been experienced as violence in all major religions and philosophies.  That we can have an extremely temporary dazzling on the part of a very few by allowing usury does not change the fact it is wrong because it does damage.

Hope that CRS goes all the way and promotes usury-free lending.  Then these people will achieve peace and prosperity faster.

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