February 2005
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Table of Contents

- Meet Samer, Shurush’s newest client
- Shurush entrepreneurs make their first loan repayments: an EJYMCA update
- Toward sustainability: the powerful concept of Shurush's revolving loan fun
- Microloans v. charity: What's the difference?
- Ear to the ground: Current stats affecting our clients
- In the next issue of The Roots Report

Meet Samer, Shurush's newest client
The Shurush Initiative is proud to announce the successful addition of a fifth client in our partner Rural Entrepreneurship Loan Program with the East Jerusalem YMCA. This month, Samer received his $3,296 loan, funded by Shurush.

Like his fellow Shurush entrepreneur Mo'yyad, Samer owns an aluminum workshop. Single and 24 years old, Samer needed capital to purchase a machine for his aluminum workshop. The Shurush Initiative welcomes Samer -- Ahlan wa sahlan -- and hopes that the acquisition of this new machine will help his workshop to thrive.
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Shurush entrepreneurs make their first loan repayments: an EJYMCA update
Previous to the addition of Samer, four Palestinian entrepreneurs had received loans through Shurush’s inaugural microloan program with the East Jerusalem YMCA: Izz-Addin, a veterinarian; Majed, a restaurateur; Mo’yyad, a metalworker; and Salim, an automobile technician.

Mabruk (congratulations, in Arabic) to Izz-Addin, Majed, Mo’yyad, and Salim: These first four Shurush entrepreneurs made their first loan repayments to the EJYMCA in January and paid the administration fees.
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Toward sustainability: the powerful concept of Shurush's revolving loan fund
There are multifarious social and economic benefits of a revolving loan fund: As our clients repay their loans, they, in turn, are helping entrepreneurs in their communities to launch or augment their own small businesses.

How does a revolving loan fund work? As they enter their second loan repayment cycle, Shurush’s first four clients have achieved a repayment rate of 100 percent. After the EJYMCA disbursed five loans from Shurush’s original loan fund of $15,000, the fund contained $704; after the first four loan repayments, there is now $1,300 in the Shurush loan fund. After another cycle or two of loan repayments, the loan fund will reach approximately $2,000, and the EJYMCA will be able to grant a sixth loan to yet another entrepreneur.
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Microloans v. charity: What's the difference?
As U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on November 18, as he launched 2005 as the U.N.’s International Year of Microcredit, "Let us be clear: Microfinance is not charity. It is a way to extend the same rights and services to low-income households that are available to everyone else. It is recognition that poor people are the solution, not the problem. It is a way to build on their ideas, energy, and vision. It is a way to grow productive enterprises, and so allow communities to prosper. Where businesses cannot develop, countries cannot flourish."

Internationally recognized microlending organization ACCION International describes the distinction between microfinance and charity as follows: "Microlending programs have the potential to cover their own costs. The interest each borrower pays helps to finance the cost of lending to another. In most poverty alleviation efforts, every person helped brings the program closer to its financial limits. Successful microlending programs, on the other hand, generate more resources with each individual they help."
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Ear to the ground: current stats affecting our clients
Each month in this section, we will highlight recent statistics that illustrate the grave economic situation facing our clients.

- Nearly half of the 3.6 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza survive on less than $2.10 per day (the global poverty line set by the World Bank), compared with 20 percent in 1999.
 
- As many as 600,000 Palestinians live below the "subsistence" level of $1.50 per day -- meaning they cannot afford to meet their basic needs for food, clothing, and shelter.
 
- 29 percent of the Palestinian workforce is unemployed.

(Source: World Bank)
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In the next issue of The Roots Report
- Client update: Photos of and detailed information on Shurush's first four clients
- Shurush goes to Harvard: Meet our Volunteer Consulting Organization team of MBA students
- Quarterly update: Dispatches from the U.N.'s International Year of Microcredit
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