coined the term "microenterprise" and began issuing small loans, pioneering the field of microcredit. 1960s Accion was founded in 1961 by a UC Berkeley law student named Joseph Blatchford. Blatchford's founding of Accion was heavily influenced by the philosophical works of Alexis de Tocqueville, Aldous Huxley and Mohandas Gandhi as well as The Ugly American by UC Berkeley professor Eugene Burdick and the classic essay “The Moral Equivalent of War” by William James. Working from James’ main thesis, Blatchford believed that Americans needed to find new, non-militaristic ways to focus their involvement abroad while promoting self-determination and democracy. A volunteer corps dedicated to international cooperation and grassroots development was one such path. Blatchford recruited two other standout UC Berkeley law students, Jerry Brady and Gary Glenn, to manage volunteer recruitment, publicity and stateside orientation of volunteers while he continued to cultivate contacts in Latin America. In the summer of 1961, the first group of 30 Americans was ready to deploy to poor barrios in urban centers around Venezuela. The nature of Accion's first projects reflected needs that the communities themselves identified as priorities. The Accion workers did everything from digging ditches to building schools to fundraising to managing sensitive negotiations between opposing community leaders. About the range of these early projects, Blatchford reflected, “The project depended on what the community was concerned about. Then the community did it, they created committees and were in charge of the project. They realized they could do it and it changed their lives.” By the mid-1960s, Accion was engaging fewer and fewer North Americans and Europeans and instead was hiring college-educated Venezuelans as organizers – a group called “Community Action Organizers.” Throughout the 1960s, Blatchford and other Accionistas worked with local business leaders in Argentina, Brazil (Rio, São Paulo, and Recife) and Peru to set up community development organizations that followed the same philosophy as the original Accion in Venezuela – “not to give people alms but to give them confidence in their own ability.” Many of these organizations – including Ação Comunitária do Brasil Rio de Janeiro, Ação Comunitária do Brasil São Paulo and Accion Comunitaria de Peru – which today is Mibanco – are still in existence today. A few years after launching in Venezuela, Accion established itself in New York to provide technical support to funders and business leaders in Latin American countries who wanted to start community action programs like