Skip to main content Skip to main navigation Skip to page-level navigation Go to the Disability Resource Centre Website Go to the DRC Booking Accommodation Portal Go to the Inclusive Technology Lab Website
The University of British Columbia
The University of British Columbia Okanagan campus
UBC Okanagan News
  • Research
  • People
    • Student Profile
    • Faculty Profile
    • Alumni Spotlight
  • Campus Life
    • Campus News
    • Student Life
    • Teaching & Learning
  • Community Engagement
  • About the Collection
    • Stories for Media
  • UBCO Events
  • Search All Stories
Home / 2012 / January / 27 / Everyone has the potential to change the world
Community Events, Policy & Social Change

Everyone has the potential to change the world

January 27, 2012

Speaker inspires others to help out and do what they can

Jessica Jackley

Jessica Jackley

Anyone who thinks one person cannot make a difference has not met Jessica Jackley.

Jackley saw a need, took action to meet that need and has had a stunning impact on countless people in the world’s poorest regions.

Since she was a small child, Jackley wanted to help the less fortunate, and she did so through her time and money, but it was not enough. Then she heard of micro-financing and her life took a decidedly different turn.

In 2005, Jackley co-founded Kiva, the world’s first peer-to-peer microlending website. Since then, Kiva has loaned out more than $275 million to people in 216 countries.

The loans are as small as $25, but are enough to change the course of someone’s life.

Jackley brought her message of providing a hand up, not a hand out to Kelowna as part of the Distinguished Speakers Series presented by the Irving K. Barber School of Arts and Sciences at UBC’s Okanagan campus.

“There are so many people who have their hands in this,” Jackley told a full house at the Rotary Centre for the Arts Thursday evening. “It has been a very positive thing. There are some really talented people out there and when you invite them in some amazing things can happen.”

Jackley says positive change can be initiated by anyone in the world and the people who loan money to Kiva come from many of the same countries in which the money is loaned out to others.

“Sometimes the people we least expect can change things in the world,” says Jackley. “Everyone has great potential. The problem is we don’t give ourselves credit that we could be the one making the change. Every person has the ability to change the world and make the world a better place to live.”

She admits to knowing little of the world of finance when launching Kiva, but her desire to help others help themselves prompted her to learn and she now holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy and political science.

Jackley is also the co-founder and CEO of ProFounder.com, an organization that helps people fund and start up their own businesses. Jackley is in charge of helping microenterprises in developing nations, while her business partner Dana Mauriello helps small family businesses in the United States.

For more information on microlending and Kiva, go to www.kiva.org.

— 30 —

Media Contact

universityrelations
E-mail: universityrelations@newsbuild.ok.ubc.ca

Content type: Media Release
More content from: Irving K Barber School of Arts and Sciences (prior July 2020)

Trending Stories

  • How one student connects AI innovation to wildfire research
  • Robotics, AI advancing wildfire, agricultural research at UBCO
  • Psychedelic mushroom microdoses can improve mood, mental health
  • UBCO professor researches electric passenger light rail for Okanagan Valley
  • Made in Canada breakthrough is a gamechanger in heart valve technology
All Stories
Contact Media Relations

About UBC Okanagan

UBC’s Okanagan campus is an innovative hub for research and learning founded in partnership with local Indigenous peoples, the Syilx Okanagan Nation, in whose traditional, ancestral and unceded territory the campus resides. The most established and influential global rankings all consistently place UBC in the top five per cent of universities in the world, and among the top three Canadian universities.

The Okanagan campus combines a globally recognized UBC education with a tight-knit and entrepreneurial community that welcomes students and faculty from around the world in British Columbia’s stunning Okanagan Valley. For more visit ok.ubc.ca.

Discover more about UBC Okanagan

Find a Program Admissions Book a Tour UBCO Facts
UBC Okanagan Campus News, University Relations

Innovation Precinct Annexation 1 (IA1)
3505 Spectrum Court
Kelowna, BC Canada V1V 2Z1

We respectfully acknowledge the Syilx Okanagan Nation and their peoples, in whose traditional, ancestral, unceded territory UBC Okanagan is situated.

 

Search all stories

Subscribe to receive news by email

Visit UBC's Vancouver news room

Global and Admin Messages

News

Okanagan Campus

TikTok icon Linkedin icon

UBC Okanagan News
Okanagan Campus
3333 University Way
Kelowna, BC Canada V1V 1V7
Find us on
  
Back to top
The University of British Columbia
  • Emergency Procedures |
  • Terms of Use |
  • Copyright |
  • Accessibility