December 29, 2008
Eric Watt founded mPOWR to feed the need as directly as possible, with the push of a button.
“It’s an interesting thing in that we’re trying to use technology ... to help the chicken farmer in Nepal,” said Watt, who spent 20 years as a missionary in places like Southeast Asia and Central America watching donations sometimes take unneccessary detours.
Watt in July shortened the steps of charitable giving by starting mPOWR, a peer-to-peer funding marketplace community that enables donors to give via the Internet directly to hand-picked micro and small-business owners, bypassing any need for an expensive middle man.
The goal of mPOWR is to empower the extreme poor – 1.4 billion people living in developing countries on less than $1.25 per day – by supplying direct financial support via the Internet.
By registering online (www.mpowr.com), donors can read through the personal profiles and practical needs of micro and small-business owners from around the world, then choose to donate directly to them. The amount per business can be as little as $25 and can be designated as a charitable contribution or interest-bearing loan to be repaid within 12 to 24 months.
While using the Internet to create peer-to-peer possibilities, mPOWR relies on trustworthy relationships to make sure money gets to where it’s supposed to, said Watt, whose vast missions connections act as hand-picked field representatives to hand deliver the donations.
“I know every (field representative) or someone who is involved in their lives,” Watt said. Watt’s nearly 20 years in the mission field have yielded contacts throughout the region mPOWR is active.
“In 1990 my wife and I moved to Singapore and spent five years training people to start businesses and churches in places closed to the Gospel, and we’ve spent the last 20 years building relationships and mentoring (indigenous) leaders who are doing the same thing,” said Watt, who also was instrumental in distributing a revised version of The JESUS Film to more than 100 countries.
One of those leaders, Ramesh Sapkota, shared a story that testifies to the power of God using mPOWR to serve the needy.
“Mrs. Sunita is the [now] proprietor of Purna Ladies Tailor (in Kathmandu, Nepal). She was a victim of early childhood marriage by her parents ... and it was learned later she was brought to his family as a slave girl,” Sapkota said. “She worked day and night, never had a full meal and eventually was kicked into the street.”
Eventually, after Sapkota paid a ransom to rescue Sunita from prostitution, she earned enough money working in a construction business to consider starting her own tailoring shop.
“Each night I had lived on dreams,” Sunita said.
The dream became reality when Sunita received training through Kingdom Investments consultancy in Nepal, with whom mPOWR partners in organizing overseas operations.
Sunita wrote up a business plan “and then began to pray for the business to be funded,” she said.
The tailoring shop now has four sewing machines that Sunita uses to make dresses for the community people.
“Now I can support my child for school and not only that but I have been training 10 other young girls the same business at the small fees,” she said, adding that without mPOWR her dreams would not have come true.
Watt stressed that every business supported through mPOWR must commit to giving back to the community.
“As they become blessed they become a blessing to the people around them,” he said. “So really you’re funding a business that sparks something that keeps going.”
A fundamental belief of mPOWR is that the poor eventually need to take responsibility for their own well being.
“This vision (of mPOWR) came from working in the developing world and recognizing that people need a hand up, not a hand out,” Watt said. “Most mission work is about helping people, but there can be a breeding of entitlement. This concept is brand new. It’s about them taking responsibility after getting some cash infusion.”
Watt also emphasized that during training for building a business, the workers hear the Gospel. Many become Christians, he said.
The peer-to-peer aspect of mPOWR hopefully will have the effect of opening the eyes of donors from wealthier nations and backgrounds, Watt said.
“We have to realize in the global world that people are way different than us and that some are really needing a hand up to get out of basic poverty,” he said.
Given a chance to escape poverty, the poor who have been trapped in darkness can make a decision to walk from that darkness into the light, Watt said.
“They can walk away from their deep, dark past,” he said. “We can change someone’s world for a little as $200 or $300.”
