( CNN ) -- One evening , when I was 24 years old , I heard Dr. Muhammad Yunus speak to a small classroom of Stanford University students . I was not a student at the time , so I crashed the lecture and sat quietly on the steps in the back of the room . What I heard that night changed my life . Dr. Yunus spoke of his journey in creating the Grameen Bank , which provides small loans to the poor . He told us about the incredible success many of Grameen 's clients had achieved , breaking the cycle of poverty in their lives with only a few borrowed dollars and an entrepreneurial spirit . But beyond sharing his story , and beyond explaining the power of microfinance to change people 's lives , Yunus spoke about the poor in a way I 'd never before heard . He described them as hardworking , motivated , intelligent entrepreneurs who had the power to improve their own lives -- not hopeless , desperate , devastated individuals waiting for a donor to make everything better . Watch an interview with Jessica Jackley . Many of my assumptions about poverty , and about my role in helping to alleviate it , were turned upside down . ( A few years after that evening lecture , Yunus and his Grameen Bank won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize , honoring their work pioneering modern microfinance . ) Listening to Yunus speak that night , I was inspired to do something . I wanted to meet hardworking entrepreneurs like the ones he 'd talked about , and to truly understand their stories . A few weeks later , I quit my job at Stanford and boarded a plane to Nairobi , Kenya , to try to do just that . TED.com : Paul Collier on `` the bottom billion '' Over the next few months , I interviewed over a hundred entrepreneurs throughout East Africa who had received $ 100 to start or grow their microenterprises . I formed powerful connections with many of those entrepreneurs , all of whom were working hard every day to lift themselves and others out of poverty -- a seamstress in Kenya who used her business profits to send her daughters to school ; a goat-herder in Uganda who could finally afford mosquito nets for his family ; a farmer in Tanzania who explained proudly how she could now , for the first time , feed her children three meals a day . These dignified individuals showed me how even a simple endeavor could be run with incredible acumen , creativity , and wisdom . It was through their stories of perseverance and optimism that my beliefs about poverty , about empowerment , about entrepreneurship , and about my own path began to shift . I wondered how the world might be different if more people could hear their stories , in detail , one at a time . And I wondered what it would be like to participate in the next chapter of their stories in a way that dignified them , not pitied them . What if a community of people could gather together to lend the next few hundred dollars they needed for their businesses to grow ? My desire to answer these questions inspired the creation of Kiva ( http : //www.kiva.org/ ) , the world 's first peer-to-peer microlending website . On Kiva , people can lend as little as $ 25 to specific entrepreneurs and get their money back when the entrepreneur repays . In a little over five years since its founding , Kiva has been one of the fastest-growing social benefit websites in history , facilitating more than $ 170 million in loans across 208 countries . Building on lessons learned at Kiva , I 've now turned my attention back home to focus on serving small business here in the U.S. as co-founder and CEO of ProFounder ( http : //www.profounder.com/ ) . ProFounder is a crowd-funding platform for American entrepreneurs to raise investments from their friends , families and communities . An unlimited number of unaccredited investors can invest and choose either to receive a share of the business 's revenues as cash , or redirect them to a nonprofit . TED.com : Andrew Mwenda takes a new look at Africa . Entrepreneurs can create a simple fundraising website including legally compliant investment terms , raise seed capital online , manage their community of supporters , pay investors dividends over time , provide regular updates on their business 's progress , and much more . It is my hope that ProFounder can change the way we support small businesses and start-ups in America . I believe in entrepreneurs . I believe in their ability to make positive change in the world . I want to see a world in which every entrepreneur has access to the resources he or she needs to succeed , and where through the power of supportive communities -- that means you and me -- every resource can be made available . Whether you are a goat-herder in the Great Rift Valley , a tech start-up guru in Silicon Valley , or someone simply eager to see an entrepreneur succeed , I invite you to join me . Invest in an entrepreneur . Become an entrepreneur . There is a new story to be written together . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Jessica Jackley .
Jessica Johnson was inspired by the example of Muhammad Yunus . She says microlending allows people to break free of the cycle of poverty . Jackley : Entrepreneurs have the power to change their own lives .