Indigo Financiera

Mexico-U.S. hometown clubs and social networks

Liz Ryan blogs on Indigo and Tierra Natal in her October posting of "Mexico-U.S. hometown clubs and social networks.

She writes about the growing hometown association movement:

"I say politically active, because the formation of HTAs is a grassroots movement awakening to the huge amount of power it has. Mexican-Americans send more than $23 billion a year to Mexico, mostly through individual and family ties. The HTAs or Clubs de Oriundos, by consolidating some of that money, are gaining political power. We'll see in the next few years how blogs and social network software will help that process. Other countries may also begin using social software to make the power of their remittance economies more transparent."

A Platform for HTAs - Tierra Natal

While this blog has been somewhat dormant, my efforts toward creating new models for productive investment through hometown associations (HTAs) have not.  One of the outcomes of the behind-the-scenes work is my involvement with a new social networking startup called Tierra Natal.

Tierra Natal is the brainchild of Liliana Miranda Townshend.   Liliana and her family are originally from Jocotopec, Jalisco, Mexico.  She has spent most of her life in California and her background includes high tech entrepreneurship.  Her parents are part of the active Jocotopec community in California and she initially built a website, www.jocotopec.com so her parents could communicate with the larger Jocotopec diaspora.

Northern Californian Jaliscan HTAs welcome Governor of Jalisco in Silicon Valley

It's been a bit of a whirlwind week in Silicon Valley for the Northern Californian Federation of Jaliscan Clubs.  This emerging umbrella organization of hometown associations, in partnership with Hispanic-Net and TierraNatal, hosted representatives from the governor's office of the state of Jalisco.  The prestigious law firm of Fenwick & West was kind enough to provide the venue for Tuesday evening's kick off presentation.  Over 60 club presidents plus governor's entourage and Hispanic-Net members gathered for the largest HTA meeting of its kind in Northern California. 

Tierra Natal and HTAs

I had the opportunity to witness the formation of the Northern California Federation of Jaliscan Clubs at the invitation of Liliana Miranda Townshend, board member of the Jaliscan federation, a Jocotopec HTA president and founder of Tierra Natal, an online social networking site for HTAs and their members.  I've known Liliana for almost 8 years now, having incubated her first startup, Tuzona, when I ran the Women's Technology Cluster (now known as Astia).

New Horizon Investment Club

In my previous post I discussed the vision of small groups organized as hometown associations becoming the source of investment capital for their communities of origin.  This summer I had the pleasure of meeting José Francisco Ávila, a Hondoran immigrant who is the founder of the New Horizon Investment Club, a group composed of Afro-Caribean Honduran immigrants who have pooled their capital to make productive investments.

1. What is Indigo?

Introduction

Indigo is a radical proposal to develop a micro-private equity fund whose source of capital comes from profits generated by a remittances service business initially targeted toward the US Mexican diaspora. Inspired by the pioneering company Working Assets, the remittances service provides a sustainable business model that allows the Indigo fund to invest in microfinance institutions and small and medium size enterprises and take more risks in this underserved market.

 

Our belief is that diaspora are an underutilized resource for fighting global poverty.  Remittances are one of the tangible touch points by which the diasporas stay connected to their extended families and communities in their home countries.  At present, remittances are used for meeting basic family needs – food, clothing, education, basic healthcare.  However, if looked at through a different lens, these funds are also a form of micro-investment, a form of extremely informal small scale angel capital.  The purpose of Indigo is to amplify and augment these angel investments through an aggregated investment fund that is built indirectly by remittance fees paid by the poor that in turn invests in them.

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