mila

Hey! I like the site! seems to work well besides the bugs Brett mentioned. Nice work!

Last week I was in Sao Paulo, Brazil and visited a pretty amazing place: a huge 20 story building that had been taken over by homeless people and activists and turned into a giant skyscraper squat, successfully defended for years, right downtown. The owner had abandoned the building and hadn’t paid taxes in over a decade, so the people declared they had a right to take it over. This process was shown in a great film by Brazilian director Toni Venturi, called “House Warming Party� (“Dia de Festa�) – Tony showed me around and introduced me to everyone.

brazil 2

What do you think of this concept: small loans to poor people?

-Mila

Lend to beggars, Nobel laureate urges banks
Sat 9 Dec 2006 16:11:18 GMT

By Alister Doyle

OSLO, Dec 9 (Reuters) - World poverty could be consigned to museums if banks and governments stimulate the creative energies of millions of poor people, Mohammad Yunus, the winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, said on Saturday.

Mainstream banks will come under pressure to lend to the poor after the award to Yunus and his Grameen Bank, the pioneer of microcredits, the maverick Bangladeshi predicted.

"When it's said that a banker got the Nobel Peace Prize it sounds funny," he told a news conference on the eve of the award ceremony in Oslo, triggering laughter.