See It: The Community being helped

Gumball Capital is a Stanford-based nonprofit organization that inspires entrepreneurship for social impact using the idea of microfinance. Microlending, one part of microfinance, involves making small loans to the poor to help raise them out of poverty. We've found microfinance to be an inspiring method of poverty alleviation, and we want to engage college students across the country with microfinance as well. We're accomplishing this by launching the Gumball Challenge, a national microfinance-benefit competition. In the competition we loan out $27 (and 27 gumballs) to participating student teams on college campuses around the US. The student entrepreneurs then have one week to create value with the $27 and gumballs. They use the $27 and gumballs as inspiration, working with limited resources to generate revenue while raising awareness about microfinance. What they create is entirely up to them. They might start a catering service, or a gumball-inspired crafts business. And the tie to microfinance goes beyond the symbolic $27 loan; all revenue that student teams generate is placed in a permanent fund that makes loans to the working poor in developing countries. The beauty of the competition is its simplicity. No 20-page business plan. No 2-month application process. Just the competitor and his or her team, their $27 loan, and their brilliant ideas. This process, we hope, will inspire the ingenuity and creativity in every student entrepreneur. By engaging them in the small-loan fiscal model, and in turn educating them about microfinance, Gumball Capital provides a platform for student entrepreneurs to realize their ambitions while at the same time support the working poor around the world. Check us out at www.gumballcapital.org!