International Open Finance Association Inc

Causes: Education

Mission: The International Open Finance Association Inc. (IOFA) is a charitable and educational organization established to promote community based economic development assistance to the poor and economically marginalized social classes of people of the world. Most poor and economically marginalized people possess the gifts of enterprise, ambition, and creativity. The IOFA believes personal gifts of creativity and enterprise should be allowed to flower into greater prosperity for all of humanity; that is to say whether their goverments or economies honor those gifts or punish those gifts. Milton Friedman has said that the poor and economically marginalized stay poor and economically marginalized not because they are lazy but because they have no access to capital and the proper financial and technical information which they can use to lift themselves out poverty.Steady jobs and reliable sources of income continue to escape the very poor and marginalized (flat wages) in the developing regions and economies of the world. To get by, many people (particularly in economically distressed regions of the world) create and run their own tiny businesses or microenterprises in the unregulated, informal sector. They might sell produce at the market, shine shoes, weave rugs, or bake bread. Without credit, many of these poor people may work hard but stay poor because of a lack of knowledge, access to financial services, information, and capital. The IOFA as an educational and charitable agency is seeking to spread the necessary knowledge in technical information in order to promote a wider spread use of modern financial architecture among the poor and marginalized social economic classes. The IOFA is developing, hosting, and sponsoring special community based educational initiatives (seminars and workshops) in modern finance practices. These seminars would serve as demonstration projects proving that teaching and raising awareness about modern financial architecture among these disadvantaged groups and can empower these groups to break out of the poverty cycle. The IOFA has begun by principally targeting the small informal Village banking groups and low volume microfinance institutions in developing countries in the US and round the world. It is with these special educational initiatives the IOFA can make certain that every individual is given the opportunity to end their own poverty cycle and help others end their poverty and promote the greater social good for humanity. The IOFA sees modern and efficient systems of finance such as XBRL and techniques of finance as self-empowerment vehicles, which can open up a broader playing field and thereby reducing the problem of income inequality, thus serving people of all social and economic backgrounds.