Several groups in Central Indiana are engaged in microfinance projects around the world:

• Jubilee Village: A local church is using micro-loans as a big part of its focused efforts to help a village in Kenya reach the Millennium Development Goals
• The Village Experience has a dozen projects just in Kenya
• Obat Helpers, which works with Biharis [Pakistanis still stranded in Bangladesh after the 1971 civil war] has been disbursing and collecting micro-loans for several years.

Other groups are experimenting with programs. Most of them very small, many of them unaware of each other. Most of them are very innovative. Provocate seeks to strengthen and expand these efforts. We want to work toward a September 30 screening of the film “Good Fortune” at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, with a discussion afterward. Our goal will be to fill the theatre with 558 of the right people — people who are ready to take the ideas discussed to their schools or churches or colleges or clubs. We will try to have everything in place to support and nurture the good ideas that come out of that event.