What is micro-enterprise development?
Micro-enterprise development (MED) is basically the process of starting or growing very small businesses through the provision of capital (generally in the form of a loan at a market interest rate) and basic business training in such fields as business planning, marketing, and bookkeeping. It can be an efficient means of empowering the materially poor. Traditional models of trying to empower the world’s materially poor have focused on giving funds to governments and institutions that, in theory, eventually benefited the poor. In reality, these funds rarely reached the palms of the materially poor and, instead, made the rich of the target area richer. Any kind of long-term dependence on gifts generally does not result in fundamental changes in the lives of the materially poor. MED is not the sole nor always even the best means of addressing the needs of the materially poor, but should be an integral part of any ministry focused on the their needs, especially those living in what we in t
