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Micro Enterprise Ideas and Development
Equipping lives for the future...
Micro-enterprise development (MED) includes a wide array of programs designed to facilitate business startups and growth. MED programs often involve educating clients in entrepreneurship and business management principles, as well as provision of consulting or advisory services. Some MED programs may also assist in providing financing for the new business, although micro-lending is generally regarded as separate services and even those organizations that offer both services tend to separate them.
Around the world, addictions and substance abuse turn people's lives upside-down. These people are then separated from their jobs, businesses, and lives. They work hard to make ends meet, but they hardly get by. Many try to start small businesses to support their families but just don’t have the resources to get going. Enterprise development programs provide ministries with the resources that will make their small ministries take off. Global Teen Challenge provides small loans and grants to entrepreneurs - often all a person needs is a loan of $50 to start a business that will support their entire family.
Global Teen Challenge also teaches entrepreneurs the skills and knowledge they’ll need to make their ministries survive and be successful. The people Global Teen Challenge serves often live in unstable environments. Global Teen Challenge has tailored its micro enterprise development programs to best serve these people. Teen Challenge takes a regional approach to micro enterprise development. Entrepreneurs can receive lending and business development services throughout a region, in their home country.
Economic Development
"Based on the available quantitative and qualitative studies on the impact of micro financing and micro enterprise development, the emerging evidence suggests that micro financing and enterprise development:
 » Reduces poverty and hunger, by allowing the poor to improve assets and incomes.
» Improves education levels: households with access to microfinance spend more on education than non-client households. Improvements in school attendance and the provision of educational materials are widely reported in microfinance households.
» Reduces child mortality, improves maternal health, and combats disease."
(CGAP, World Bank Consultative Group to Assist the Poor, CGAP Annual Report, 2004)
Seed Gifts & Grants
Global Teen Challenge’s Micro Enterprise development programs provide ministries with the resources that will make their small business take off. Global Teen Challenge provides small loans and grants to entrepreneurs - often all a person needs is a loan of $50 to start a business that will support their entire family. Global Teen Challenge also teaches entrepreneurs the skills and knowledge they’ll need to make their business survive and be successful. The people Global Teen Challenge serves often live in unstable environments and may at any time return to their homes or be forced to flee yet again. Global Teen Challenge has tailored its micro enterprise development programs to best serve these people. Global Teen Challenge takes a regional approach to micro enterprise development. Entrepreneurs can receive lending and business development services throughout a region, in their country of refuge and their home country.
Small Business Loans
Micro-loans are very small loans, usually ranging in amount from $25 to $100, although some may reach as high as $1,000. Most loans are short-term, from a short term of a few weeks to a longer term of six months to a year. They typically involve equal weekly payments such that the loan plus interest are repaid by these payments—no balance due at the end of the loan term. Most loans are for working capital investment—merchandise, supplies, fuels—and almost all are for the production of income.
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