I've been a volunteer host for the US Diplomacy Council (now managed by the International Institute of Education on the West Coast) for the last 15 years. About 2 times per year, volunteer hosts are asked to invite visiting mid-career visitors from foreign countries (trips sponsored by the US State Department) to their homes for dinner, good conversation, and friendship. The guests visit businesses and universities in their fields and in several states of the country. Over the years I've hosted guests from Central Asia, Latin America, the Far East, Africa, and last night, Lebanon and South Korea - Drs Kim and Sadek, both PhDs in economics. Their group of 18 were from about 16 countries and interested in entrepreneurship in emerging economies.
We had a glorious meal and learned so much from our visitors. I was very surprised to hear that one feasible economic integration method being bandied about for a possible future coming together of South and North Koreas is micro-finance. With North Koreans having no recent history of entrepreneurship, micro-finance could be a mechanism for introducing the population to small business creation - restaurants, beauty and barber shops, bicycle and motorcycle repair shops, clothing stores, food shops, and so forth. Of course I told Dr Kim to sign me up if he needed any help with such an exciting undertaking.
Dr. Sadek had not worked with micro-finance in his country. I told him that I had invested in several micro-credit loans in Lebanon via Kiva (www.kiva.org).
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