Talk about timing. This year at Trickle Up, we started what we call our Delta Initiative with a plan to give $700 grants to the poorest of the poor in Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas to start very small businesses. Our first grant under this initiative went to Louisa Montgomery of Shelby, Miss., who runs a barbecue catering business for local construction crews. With our seed money, she bought a huge grill that allows her to double her output; she can cook enough at a time to prepare 50 plates a day.

She had just bought the grill when Hurricane Katrina hit the area. We have decided to help the poorest victims in the region by giving grants so that they can start small businesses, such as landscaping and yard work, cleaning services, day care, maybe handicrafts, although you never know what entrepreneurial ideas someone might turn up. We hope to raise $700,000 to $1 million for the Delta area. We aim high in our fund raising. If we can make it, great; if not, we know we tried.

My second husband, Glen Leet, who died in 1998, came from an old Connecticut family that founded Leete Island. Some of the family dropped the “e.” Glen always said our country was built on microfinance. One founding father may have bought a plow and another put up the cash to buy seeds, and they started small businesses with what capital they could get.

So Glen married this little gal from Brooklyn: me. We came from very different backgrounds, but I think ours was the least argumentative marriage that has ever been. It was an extraordinary merging of two minds with simple goals: We wanted to work on eradicating poverty. How do you do that? Well, you encourage people, first of all, by listening to them, and second, giving them start-up capital so that they can start a business.

“OTHER PEOPLE said, ‘That’s lovely what you’re doing, darling,’ but we had to prove this project could work before anyone else would donate to it.”

We started Trickle Up in 1979 on the Caribbean island of Dominica, which had an unemployment rate of about 45 percent. We started working with a local women’s organization there, and asked people to spread the word: “Anyone interested in starting a business, come and talk to us.” Initially, Glen and I put up $1,000 of our own money. Other people said, “That’s lovely what you’re doing, darling,” but we had to prove this project could work before anyone else would donate to it. We found people in Dominica with many ambitions. One would be interested in starting a bakery, one in making carpets and another in making T-shirts.

What we had in mind was not the same as microfinance. Our goal was to reach people who are so poor many of them do not have the collateral to get a micro-loan, not yet. We had those who were interested fill out a one-page application, asking such questions as: What kind of business would you like to start? How much would it cost you to make the products? How much would you have to charge to make a profit? If they could show us a reasonable business plan in the application, we would give them $50. Then, a couple of months later, if they could show us their records of money going out and money coming in, we would give them the second $50. After that, they were off on their own, and they learned to build their own capital.