A New Social Justice Initiative: Equitable Local (micro)Lending Initiative

Post Author
Andy Douglas

An exciting new social justice initiative is happening at UUS. This is our new ELLI ministry: the Equitable Local (micro)Lending Initiative. Microlending is a proven means of helping underserved populations participate in the local economy. UUS/ELLI is committed to pursuing this new avenue of economic justice work in our community and to grounding it in our core values: Justice, Equity, Transformation, Pluralism, Inclusion/Interdependence, and Generosity. 

The ELLI team – Andy Douglas, Sally Hartman, Mary Losch and Jason Hardie – has been hard at work over the past year. We are excited to announce that we will be working together with the Multicultural Development Center of Iowa (mdci.org), a wonderful nonprofit doing great work in helping people of color start businesses and get involved in STEM-related projects. They have the experience, software platform and staff to follow up on loans. UUS/ELLI will serve as the underwriter of the loans.

In developing this project, we recognize that our country has a skewed distribution of wealth: a minority of people hold the majority of assets. Many people face difficulties in raising capital to start small businesses. Perhaps their credit doesn’t allow them to get loans from a traditional lender, or their history has not allowed them to build equity.  

ELLI will support two kinds of loans – small business start-up loans and emergency loans. We’re especially interested in supporting businesses that have community benefit, including cooperatives. As for the emergency loan pool, we recognize that urgent expenses sometimes arise and may present a difficult situation to low-income people, who may be forced to turn to predatory payday lenders. Our loans will be either zero percent or low interest loans. 

We hope our collaboration with MDCI will open doors to further cooperation on economic justice issues in areas of the community we have not explored. And we believe the UUS can serve as a bridge between various parts of the greater Iowa City community, by helping to facilitate more transformation, equity and interdependence. We hope that members of the UUS community and of the larger interfaith community will support this project. If you’d like to get involved, or would like more information, please get in touch. Contact Andy at andy.c.douglas@gmail.com. Also take a look at our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61559943549719.