COMMUNICATION IN MICROFINANCE
An Exploratory Case Study

Irina Gendelman and Giorgia Aiello
University of Washington

PlaNet Finance

PlaNet Finance sets itself up as an organization that empowers the poor to get out of poverty by supplying loans to those who do not have credit. Their mission states that their financing targets the “poorest” populations, especially women. These small loans enable the women to work and through work “escape conditions of extreme poverty” (http://www.planetfinance.org/).

Planet Finance was established in 1998 with support of Muhammed Yunus among other formidable supporters such as Massimo Ponzellini,vice-president of the European Investment Bank. The rhetoric of PlaNet Finance in its mission statement focuses on assisting those in poverty. Initially, a pilot project of the program was established in Kenya, in order to identify the needs of the local microfinance stakeholders. Within the following three years PlaNet Finance became an international NGO at the forefront of microfinance institutions, heading a network of organizations. PlaNet Finance became a large sponsor and lender to locally based microfinancing institutions.

The organization positions itself as an intermediary between banks, private sponsors, locally based microlending chapters and the poor. The PlaNet Finance site reiterates a point that the organization receives wide institutional support. The mission statement describes its original sponsors as banks, private sponsors, high-tech companies, public and international institutions, as well as the general public. The legitimacy of the organization is further underscored by institutional support in statements such as this one, “several heads of European and international institutions collaborated in their personal capacity to define its concept and methods.”

Additionally, the mission statement makes a strong point that the goal of the organization is to use the “enormous potential of the Internet to promote development and microcredit.” The Net in PlaNet alludes to the idea of a Network around the planet working to promote a “socially conscious” development through financing small loans to the poor around the globe. The icon of the PlaNet Finance website, two hands holding the globe orbited by imaginary virtual connections connotes a feeling of the planet being small and fragile, enveloped in communication networks and cradled carefully in human hands.

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