About half of the entire world lives on less than about $2.50 a day. Eighty percent of the world lives on less than ten dollars a day, and incredibly, about six percent of the world somehow manages to get by on a dollar a day.

We hear figures like this and react in one of two different ways. Either we think, “Oh, but ten dollars is a lot of money in a third world country,” or we go the opposite way and can’t even imagine how that could be possible. Let’s dispel that first myth right away.

One of my favorite countries to visit is India. And it’s really an amazing country with great diversity, and as economists and politicians love to remind us, there is an economic miracle going on there with a rapidly growing service sector and a large, emerging middle class. Here in the west, we hear stories about “India, Inc.” and how real wages are growing, people are buying more consumer goods, and knowledge-based jobs are popping up in all the major cities. We imagine that people in India are all driving new cars, living in big homes with new kitchen appliances, and trading in their saris and kurtas for snazzy business suits imported from Italy. We believe that India is one big “Silicon Valley” and prosperity has spread throughout the land. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

Yes, it’s true that the standard of living has risen for a lot of people in India, and we can’t argue against that. It’s certainly a good thing that there are more jobs, and that the average wage has risen.  But that newfound prosperity hasn’t found its way all round the country, and there are still huge pockets of poverty and millions of people still earning the equivalent of two or three dollars a day.

Let’s think about that for a moment. A weekly wage of about twenty dollars—mere pocket change for most of us. Money that in most big cities in the U.S., wouldn’t even buy dinner for two at even a moderately-priced restaurant.

I met Rahul in Kolkata, who got a small (or what seems small to us) microloan of just a couple hundred dollars, and used it to open up a food stall. Now by American standards, even with his new business, he’s by no means well-off, or even what we would consider to be middle-class. But he went from earning about $20 a week, to quadrupling that. Eighty dollars a week still seems poor to us, and he’s still not going to be buying any new cars any time soon. He probably never will. But the increase in income means the difference between going hungry so his children can eat, and being able to feed his entire family and himself as well.

So many people in the West would discount that as irrelevant, but let’s not hold the rest of the world to our own standards. Imagine yourself struggling on sub-poverty wages, and then all of a sudden you’re able to quadruple your income. Even if that quadrupling is still poor by Western standards, it has made a huge difference in Rahul’s life, and in the lives of his children. We at Club Asteria are always pleased to hear when microlending programs can improve peoples’ lives for the better. Please support our efforts to promote microlending programs, and help put an end to the extreme poverty that robs so many people of their dignity.

West Bengal is one of India’s most backward states in terms of rural development. As we drove from Kolkata the capital towards Midnapore, the landscape grew greener but the signs of prosperity slowly faded into miles of rice fields, thatched huts and small roadside arteries. Many of Bengal’s villages do not have electricity and the evening brings total darkness dispelled by the dim glow of lanterns and lamps. While economic growth in India has benefited a growing middle class, it has also widened the existing schisms between urban and rural, backward and prosperous states and between skilled and non-skilled labor.

The roads are bumpy and the ride is bone-rattling as we speed through the district of Midnapore with its many villages. I was on my way to see a model village where microloans had made a remarkable difference in the lives of women. We got there at around midnight and were taken to our huts by a gaggle of giggling women in colorful cotton saris.

The next morning we were taken to the village community hall, where the women had assembled and were waiting for us. The small village was clean, the huts bright with painted exteriors and children playing in the sunlit courtyards. As elsewhere, it is the women who bore the brunt of looking after the home and the land, while the men were usually at the local tea shop, whiling away their time till the evening when toddy (local liquor) would do the rounds to dull the misery and sense of hopelessness.

It was amazing what microloans had done to the lives of these women in rural Bengal. It was not just about the money, though of course, it had increased their income, made their lives more comfortable and enabled them to send their young children to the local government school. It was also about dignity, self respect and a growing confidence in their own skills and abilities. It was about having been empowered in what was overwhelmingly a man’s world.

Beena and her small Self-Help-Group (or SHG’s as they are known) had gained in social stature commensurate to their earning power as they had availed of the loans given by the microfinancing organization based in Kolkata. Beena had bought land to grow rice and vegetables, increased her livestock and bought more hens as she wishes to have a poultry business. With growing income, she is paying off her loan regularly and is looking with increasing hope at a brighter future.

All the women narrated their stories of achievement and their pride in doing something on their own and succeeding in their efforts. It was a wonderful experience, listening to them and knowing with even greater certainty that microfinance was one of the answers to poverty and social disparities.

Club Asteria supports microfinance to disadvantaged groups worldwide. We seek your valuable cooperation in this effort of ours to usher in a fairer and more equitable world, where everyone can live with dignity and self-respect.

I’d like to tell you a story from two different sides. While in Thailand I spent some time with an expatriate who was living in Bangkok. By all measures, a pretty good guy. He was good to his family, didn’t have a violent bone in his body, and his friends thought highly of him. He was the guy you’d say “would give you the shirt off his back.”

His life in Thailand was great. He enjoyed having a big house just outside of Chiang Mai, and since he was semi-retired, had plenty of time to enjoy the tropical country and make frequent trips to the sea. He was the envy of his friends back home in cold and snowy Chicago. Back there, he was just an ordinary working man, and when he retired, he was granted a small pension. Together with social security, he found that in Chicago it was barely enough to live on. He tried it for about a year, but soon got tired of his small apartment, and having to pinch pennies to get by. He took his savings and moved to Thailand, where he met a lovely younger Thai lady and married her, rented a spacious house with a yard that had palm trees in it, and employed a full-time housekeeper.

One thing he always boasted about to his friends back home was having a housekeeper. He never had household help back home, nor did any of his friends. It just wasn’t part of his reality. We were visiting one day and I heard him on the phone to one of his friends back in Chicago. “Yeah,” he said. “I got a housekeeper now, full-time, it’s great! And what’s even better is that it just costs me $150 a month!” It was almost as if he were talking about getting a bargain on a household appliance rather than an actual person’s services.

Of course, in Thailand that’s about the going rate, and it might be even less if the housekeeper is a Burmese immigrant. It just wouldn’t occur to most people that this amount of money causes families to live in desperate poverty. I’ve talked to a lot of people with housekeepers in Thailand, and very few of them have considered paying more than the going rate. It’s not that they’re skinflints, most of them are nice people, but they’re just buying a service at the going rate and don’t think any more of it.

A lot of these housekeepers don’t speak much English and I don’t speak very much Thai, but one day I did encounter a friend’s housekeeper with whom I was able to communicate. With no education to speak of, Lek, my acquaintance’s 28-year-old housekeeper, didn’t have a lot of options and was grateful for the job, which really wasn’t too hard, since her boss was an older single man whose house was never that messy to begin with. Lek still lived with her parents and four sisters. “I’d like to have a business some day,” she said. She dreamed of having a little shophouse with a small store and noodle shop. She and her family had often talked about turning their older family home into a shophouse, but just never had the resources to do it.

Because Lek and her family didn’t have any education and were unable to read, they didn’t know much about microloans, and just assumed that they were for other people who had more money and education. I explained to her that just wasn’t the case, and before you know it, she was on her way to apply.

The day she quit her housekeeping job was the happiest day in her life. With a small loan, Lek and her family were able to open up their shophouse, and it’s made a huge difference in their lives. One thing she wanted to do more than anything was to send her younger sister Fon to the local community college. Fon had just graduated from high school—the first in her family to do so, and that was a big accomplishment, but Lek wanted even more for her sister.

The next time I saw Lek, her shop house was open and she was happily serving noodles to her hungry clientele, and I saw Fon walking home in her college uniform. She met her goal! And what’s even happier about this situation is that when I talked to Lek’s mother, she told me that she even planned to send Lek herself to school.

Microlending makes a big difference with small amounts of money. Club Asteria actively supports microlending programs, and we encourage you to join our program and make more happy endings like this one.

Hi, I’m Andrea Lucas, Managing Director of Club-Asteria. Club-Asteria is an online global membership organization that provides education, business opportunities, e-commerce and innovative programs to empower our members.  Please visit our site at www.club-asteria.com to learn about our programs and services and our goals for the future and read about our philanthropic activities in the News.

I have now started the series of blogs so I can share my views and experiences with all of my family and friends and the extended community of people that are interested in global affairs.

Everything in my life that I have lived through – both good and bad, has brought me to this moment in time.  I now have the ability to contribute to some of society’s most critical and pressing issues – the plight of hundreds of millions of people that still live in poverty despite the advances in our social network and technology.  Human beings just like you and I who don’t enjoy the simple advantages of clean drinking water, reliable electricity, adequate shelter, the simplest of health care, food and education.

As I have traveled the world in my position in the financial community I have experienced first- hand this injustice and tragedy of humanity.  My life today is dedicated to not only sharing the plight of these undeserved people of the world but more importantly to serve as a catalyst of change to truly benefit their individual lives.  I hope that you will enjoy reading about my many experiences and the people I meet and can lend support to.

My blogs will touch on a variety of subjects, from e-commerce to financial support to philanthropic assistance to most importantly, education that can benefit each of the individuals and families that we are seeking to help.