Natalie Portman showed up on ABC’s “This Week” to endorse extending microloans to women in the poorest countries.
“They’re able to get a loan and start their own business out of their own house and be with their children,” she said. “It changes the whole system. If a woman can’t tell her child, ‘I can feed you tomorrow, I can pay for your school,’ then where do they go? What do they do? What do they choose? It’s really trying to reach the poorest of the poor and offering banking services to them.”
Natalie has been working with FINCA International, an organization that provides small loans to people in developing countries.
Microloans are loans in very small amounts — in developing countries, often only a couple hundred dollars — which traditional banks won’t offer, both due to the small amount and the lack of credit history of the borrowers. FINCA, which lends primarily to women in 21 developing nations, has a loan repayment rate of 97%.
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- Filed under: Natalie Portman
