Madison, WI — Madison Breakfast Rotary Club Foundation has made a grant to WorldWise Microfinance (WMF) that will help support a new program in Malawi, where 70 percent of the population lives in extreme poverty.
Club president Bruce Harville saluted WMF for launching the Malawi program that will focus on “small loans, primarily to women in and around the community of Lilongwe.” Rotary also made small grants to several other Dane County nonprofits at the awards ceremony.
WMF board member Brad Paul, who accepted the grant alongside president Tom Eggert, characterized the Rotary recognition as a demonstration that “ideas and passion are worth backing.” He added: “I once heard a CEO confidently describe their work as a “science,” and it struck me as backwards. Models in search of an application rarely serve a cause well. But when imagination, trust, and human judgment stay at the center, real change becomes possible.”
The Malawi program, like all WMF programs across Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Caribbean, provides very small loans to women who launch or expand personal businesses, or as Paul puts it, “so their idea might become a livelihood.”
