The Back Story
Lynann Bradbury was the brainchild behind MiFiMentor. Here’s her story:
It started in a lead-paneled room, in the 12th floor oncology ward of Seattle’s Swedish Hospital. I was quarantined. Once a day, a doctor would inch into my room, stand behind a lead panel, and point a geiger counter at me. After three rounds of cancer, they’d given me so much radiation I wasn’t safe to be in public. Twenty years in business never prepared me for that.
I went into bargaining mode. Not with the doctor; with God. “Get me through this, and I’ll be a better person. I promise to help others the best way I can.”
Five years later, I’m keeping that promise. Every year, I go to a foreign country for a month, to do volunteer work and/or learn about different cultures. Three months after getting out of the hospital, I was in New Zealand, building houses with the Maoris. (At that time, doctors wouldn’t give me clearance to go to Africa, SE Asia, or anywhere my immune system was susceptible to major diseases.) In 2007, I was a mentor in northern India, teaching digital storytelling to refugee kids at the Tibetan Children’s Village.
In 2008, I spent five weeks in Peru, learning Spanish and seeing microfinance projects from the ground-up: farmers hand-plowing the fields, artisans perfecting their pottery, women weaving blankets and shawls to sell at the market. They didn’t want a hand out, they wanted a hand up. They wanted a small loan and a job that would pay a modest income to help lift themselves and their families out of poverty. What they needed was encouragement to persevere when an unforeseen problem arose.
That’s the genesis of MiFiMentor. A mentorship program that augments the microfinance industry, by encouraging MFI’s to learn softer skills and develop leadership capabilities to mentor village entrepreneurs in growing their businesses. As their businesses grow, they create jobs for others and greater economic stability for their villages.
In essence, that’s what MifiMentor is all about: lifting people out of poverty — one job, business and village at a time.