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Patty
Grossman
Cascadia Revolving Fund
Interviewed
by Lynn Adler and Jim Mayer
Producers of Faith, Hope and Capital
Patty
Grossman believes that the role of CDFIs is to reform the economy and
revolutionize the monetary system. She's been working in the Pacific Northwest
to do just that.
Read a portion below of our interview or go to a printer-friendly page
of the full interview.
LA: Why don't we first talk about the causes of poverty
in this region.
PG: The
Pacific Northwest shares one characteristic with most areas of the country,
and that is that most counties have female head-of-household rates of
poverty that are shockingly high30-50%. But there's also some sources
of poverty peculiar to the region. One peculiarity is that in the past,
the economy of the Pacific Northwest really consisted of timber and the
fishing industries. Today, those are beleaguered industries, becoming
much less part of the mainstay economy. It's happening in a relatively
short period of time, so the transition to a new economy is very difficult
for very large groups of people.
LA: You
once said to us that the role of CDFIs was to reform the economy and revolutionize
the monetary system.
PG: Well,
I think the goal is no less grand a conception than that. Now it seems
a little silly to talk in those terms when you're talking about a nascent
movement, which is struggling with very basic issues of how to do this
endeavor. But, I really think that CDFIs are the key to opening up tremendous
opportunity to a lot of people who are left out of the economic mainstream.
It's such a hackneyed phrase, but I really think that's exactly what we're
doing. I think the goal of CDFIs is to provide that initial foothold that
somebody can climb a mountain fromenough money to make your idea fly.
It just doesn't exist anywhere else and that's the whole idea of CDFIto
provide the nuts and bolts and the frameworks for support, so people can
make it over the long haul.
Full interview for printout
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