page_title: MicroConsignment
section_title: The Solution
hierarchical_section_title: MicroConsignment / The Solution
caption_attribution_description: English: An MCM entrepreneur administers an eye exam to a community member.
context_page_description: The MicroConsignment Model establishes profitable income generating opportunities for primarily women that to date are selling products such as wood-burning stoves, reading glasses, water filters, seeds and gardening techniques and energy efficient lightbulbs to villagers. Through the MCM local individuals with entrepreneurial qualities can start their own business through “sweat equity” and realize profits from inception. Although it rarely works in practice, the model allows for collaboration with local strategic partner organizations to adapt local solutions and train and support local entrepreneurs who serve rural communities within designated territories. What drives the model is an interdisciplinary, intuitive and non-linear approach whereby all stakeholders add value. The model utilizes a rotating capital mechanism with low start-up costs that are continually reinvested. In essence, the MCM strives to intervene at all levels by creating an “ecosystem” whereby problems are diagnosed and products are encountered/designed which are then inserted into the distribution model via the locally trained and supported entrepreneurs.
context_section_description: The MCM aims to solve this puzzle by delivering essential products and services at affordable prices to the rural poor in the developing world. MCM entrepreneurs, primarily young women and homemakers who work within defined territories, provide solutions to health problems, save families money, help individuals increase their productivity, and help protect the environment. MCM entrepreneurs offer solutions to help the population at the “base of the pyramid” — in this case, the most vulnerable rural communities — by addressing the “what” (essential products and services), the “who” (rural villagers), and the “where” (rural villages) by creating a highly scalable local distribution network that works to diagnose and address the myriad obstacles confronting these communities in a sustainable way.
caption: An MCM entrepreneur administers an eye exam to a community member in Concepción, a village of Quetzaltenango, Guatemala.
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