T. Rowe Price’s Holiday Card Giving Campaign Aims for Impact
CHOMA, Zambia, December 22, 2016 /3BL Media/ -- Zambia’s Southern Province bordering Zimbabwe, home to the storied and soaring Victoria Falls, is a rich cultural mosaic with access to natural resources such as copper and water.
As with other nations whose economics are based on extractive industries, a vast divide between the impoverished and the wealthy has been created, causing the educational infrastructure to suffer.
With more than 60% of Zambia’s inhabitants living in poverty and more than half of the country’s population under the age of 16, young learners find it difficult to obtain critical literacy skills due to the insufficient number of reading programs.
Enter T. Rowe Price. Following the company’s annual tradition of making a strategic and high-impact donation on behalf of its clients and friends through the Holiday Card Program, T. Rowe Price gifted $50,000 to the global nonprofit Room to Read® in 2015. Room to Read® focuses on supplying quality reading materials, providing training for teachers, and improving the learning environments for children living in areas like Zambia’s Southern Province.
T. Rowe Price’s donation helped Room to Read® outfit Swan Primary School, located in Choma, with monthly, multi-day literacy instruction trainings for educators, fresh paint and bookshelves, and more than 1,200 new library books.
“When identifying a grantee, T. Rowe Price selects institutions with the ability to really move the needle and leave a legacy. Swan Primary School’s new library will be an educational amenity for years to come,” says John Brothers, president of the T. Rowe Price Foundation.
This holiday season, T. Rowe Price wants to make an equally significant impact by partnering with Kiva. Considered a pioneer in crowdfunding loans, Kiva facilitates microloans across the globe to work toward alleviating poverty. The nonprofit operates in more than 82 countries, and since its inception, nearly $1 billion has been lent worldwide.
Its approach combines loans from multiple donors—starting from as small as $25—to provide borrowers outside the traditional banking system with the capital. Borrowers repay their loans into the lender’s Kiva account where the money can be used to fund a new loan, given as a donation, or withdrawn from the account.
The T. Rowe Price Foundation’s grant of $50,000 will support the operating costs of Kiva’s platform and enable them to continue facilitating interest-free loans.
“We selected Kiva for our annual Holiday Card grant because we share their vision in which all people around the world have the opportunity to start or grow a business, pursue an education, access clean energy, and realize their full potential,” says John.
