Microfinance as the match to the flame

Andy Posner, a 24-year-old Environmental Studies masters student at Brown University, has started the Capital Good Fund, a program in Providence to provide small loans to low-income and minority people and women who want to start green businesses.

He writes that he was inspired by a green job training program in Providence where 25% of the graduates said they want to become entrepreneurs.  According to the director of the program, Mark Kravatz, “they see how green can be good for them, their family and their community, and they want to get in on the game.”

For all the talk about green jobs lately, funding has been slow to come.  There seems to be a fear by lawmakers that they will train too many people too soon, before the building retrofits and solar panel installation gets started in large numbers.  The strength of Posner’s program is that it builds jobs slowly — a small business can take on just a couple new employees every year — and can grow at the same pace as the market for energy-efficient technologies.  When that market takes off, as it surely will, these small businesses will be prepared to handle the demand.  And the profits will stay in lower-income communities, a truly sustainable model of growth.

Hat tip to Jake Brewer.