During one of our book discussions, someone in our group had an idea: Why not try microfinance on a local level? Microfinance is much less effective here than in third-world countries due to the amount of capital required to start a viable business. Because of this, there is very little microfinance activity in America. But the key word is viable. What if we were able to lend to people who didn’t rely on their business to survive?

About a month earlier, our group had spent a few hours volunteering at Freedom for Youth Ministries, an organization dedicated to reaching the homeless teenagers and young adults in the city with the gospel.* One of their many ways of making a difference is the Safe Haven, a transitional house for boys ages 18 to 21. At the Safe Haven, they get the opportunity to live in a highly structured community environment while learning trade skills (such as welding and woodworking) and life skills (such as planning a budget). We didn’t know if they had any budding entrepreneurs we could finance, but it was at least worth asking.

Later that week I mentioned all this to my friend Jeremy over lunch. He thought it was a fantastic idea. But his opinion meant a lot more than just sideline support: What I didn’t know is that for the past year, Jeremy had been in talks with Mark Nelson (the founder and executive director at FFYM) about starting a new side of the ministry called Freedom for Youth Enterprises.

The idea behind FFYE is that it’s a for-profit corporation, and it employs the residents of the Safe Haven and the Promise House (the female counterpart transitional house) in various business ventures, with the intention being to teach good work ethics while generating money to finance the main ministry. After coming up with the idea, Mark immediately set his sights on Jeremy to run it. (If you knew Jeremy you’d know why. There’s not a more perfect job in the world for him.)

Jeremy called a few days after our lunch and said he’d told to Mark about our microfinance idea and that Mark wanted to set up a meeting with us to develop it. He even had someone in mind for our first project: a kid with a great deal of artistic talent who wanted to start a T-shirt business.

We’re still working on the details of the program, but it’s by no means just a low-interest loan. One of the conditions of the loan is that we meet with him weekly to hear updates until the loan is repaid. Through this, we hope to develop a mentoring relationship with the entrepreneur, helping him to develop his business and providing guidance along the way. And when the loan is repaid, we can lend it to someone else or even reinvest it back into the business.

Now, a couple months later, Jeremy is on the payroll at Freedom for Youth Enterprises and we hope to start our microfinance experiment sometime in the fall. I still can’t believe how well everything fit together, but I thank God for the opportunity we’ll have to try this out. If this first venture is in any way successful, we hope to develop the program into something more scalable so that we can involve other churches in Des Moines.

It may be huge or it may never really get off the ground. I don’t know. But our success or failure won’t be measured in the amount of profit we generate for Freedom for Youth or by how many jobs we create; the program’s success will be measured by how well we are able to develop lasting and meaningful relationships with these kids. That’s something we just can’t do with Kiva.