Helping Hands

Joe Selvaggio will be at Magers & Quinn Booksellers on Wednesday, June 2, at 7:30pm.

Selvaggio, the founder of Project for Pride in Living, launched the MicroGrants Organization in 2006. MicroGrants is an innovative nonprofit promoting the self-sufficiency of individuals in need through strategically placed $1000 grants to support home-based businesses, construction tools, office equipment and supplies, books, job training tuition, licenses for day-care or cleaning businesses, insurance, down payments on necessary cars and even working capital.

Selvaggio's book Microgrants: It's Working! tells the stories of seventy-seven MicroGrants recipients in the Twin Cities area, demonstrating how relatively small amounts of cash, loaned or granted to poor people with ability and drive, can have a profound effect on their lives, their families, and their communities. The accounts relate the recipients' struggles to improve their lives, how they used their grants, and what happened as a result. MicroGrants also offers commentary and analysis of the program from several perspectives, including Jim Klobuchar, John Mauriel, Tony Bouza, Tom Fiutak, Mitch Pearlstein, Laura Watterman Whitstock, and Betsy Buckley. MicroGrants, It’s Working! shows and effective way to escape from poverty and to move toward self-sufficiency.

Selvaggio will be joined at Magers & Quinn by former Minneapolis Chief of Police Tony Bouza, who wrote the introduction to Microgrants.

Details are here.--David E