Banded Yoke

Empowering individuals with mentoring, funding, and opportunity

A real, sustainable impact on the global poverty crisis…

Who are we?

We are a non-profit organization with a mission to empower people through mentoring, funding, and opportunity to alleviate poverty. Leveraging the power of the Internet and a global marketplace, the Banded Yoke lets individuals grant as little as $10 to help create opportunity for those in poverty around the world.

Why do we do it?

We envision a world where all people – even the most under resourced people on earth – hold the power to create sustainable opportunity for themselves and others and are not at the mercy of local economies, or local situations.

We believe providing safe, affordable access to capital, exceptional mentoring, and the opportunity to create income through a global marketplace helps people create better lives for themselves and their families. We feel the only way to truly affect regional economic change that will have a lasting affect in the war on poverty is to empower individuals to rise up into globally competitive opportunity that brings trade, information, and opportunity from outside their depressed local situation.

How do we do it?

Giving a life empowering grant to a recipient is so easy that you may not imagine the personal toil of the many people involved during the process. Grant recipients, mentors, mentor overseers, and many others are personally invested, every single day, in the success of each entrepreneur.

The Banded Yoke teams up with a global network of online businesses that harness the exact same revenue stream that fuels businesses such as Google™, Facebook™, Yahoo™, and many others. In this manner we are able to provide a stable, growing, sustainable opportunity to each entrepreneur. We also depend upon a world-wide network of hundreds of volunteer mentors who work hand-in-hand with each entrepreneur. One of the key elements to sustainable success is our robust mentoring program.

However, the most critical element are the micro-grant givers, such as yourself. When you give a micro-grant to an entrepreneur, you provide the seed capital that launches their global business. You open the world to the recipient of your grant and begin the process by which they will emerge from poverty into a life of self-sustenance and dignity. Without your micro-grant, the entire process is impossible.

How are we funded?

100% of every dollar you grant to entrepreneurs goes directly to the seed capital fund for that entrepreneur’s business. The Banded Yoke does not take any money from the micro-grants, nor do we charge interest to the recipients of the grants. When you give a life changing micro-grant to a recipient you can be sure that 100% of the money will be given to the person you intended to help.

The Banded Yoke has operational costs we must cover. We fund our operations mostly through optional donations given to our organization by micro-grant givers, such as yourself. We also raise operational funds through grants, corporate sponsors, and foundations.

The Oath for Compassionate Service

We have chosen to adopt the following oath as our creed and to measure all aspects of the Banded Yoke, it’s ministry, operations, and governance, against this oath:

• Never do for the poor what they have (or could have) the capacity to do for themselves
• Limit one-way giving to the emergency situations
• Strive to empower the poor through employment, lending, and investing, using grants sparingly to reinforce achievements
• Subordinate self-interests to the needs of those being served
• Listen closely to those we seek to help, especially to what is not being said, because unspoken feelings may contain essential clues to effective service
• Above all, do no harm

How can you get involved?

• Give a micro-grant
• Share the Banded Yoke with your friends and relatives
• Work or Volunteer with us
• Learn more about micro-finance and why the Banded Yoke is unique