For women in need of a loan

Natalie Portman is one Hollywood stars whose charity work is more than just PR puff.

More stars like Natalie

Rather than ‘just’ be the face of a charity visiting this or that beleaguered country, she works with the Foundation for International Community Assistance (Finca), which offers micro-financial investment to women in developing countries, often running businesses in villages with no power or running water. It’s a very under-the-radar – and unshowy – charitable initiative.
You can see a recent interview with her here.

‘Well, yeah, because I wanna do something meaningful,” she told The Observer newspaper. “They ask you to do 4,000 charity things a year and all of them are worthy. But I don’t think you can really make an impact unless you do [just] one thing and really devote yourself. And it’s been important to me.’

Portman was born in Israel (her family moved to the US when she was three) and in 2004 spent six months doing Middle Eastern studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She became involved with Finca after reading that Queen Rania of Jordan was a supporter.

‘I contacted her because I was interested in doing some sort of Israeli/Palestinian initiative with women, and she’s the most high-profile Palestinian woman in the world. And also someone I really admire. She’s just super-eloquent and smart and compassionate and doing great things. So I hoped to do something with her, and she directed me towards micro-finance.

‘It’s amazing,’ she continues, her unblinking eyes shining eagerly.’It’s less of a charity than sort of an expansion of opportunity. It’s opening up banking services to the poor.’ She reels off figures: worldwide, 2.5bn people don’t have access to banking services; half the world – 3bn people – live on less than $2 a day. And 70 per cent of them are women and children. ‘So it’s giving to these women, like, $50, and they start their own businesses, or augment their existing businesses. Then they pay back their loans, so the loans recycle. It is,’ she repeats (like the kid she was not so long ago), ‘pretty amazing.’

She’s hopeful that western society is on the brink of a paradigm shift – that the mark of a mature capitalist culture is not conspicuous consumption and excess, but restraint and moderation. ‘Absolutely!’ And true to form, Portman has looked into this issue properly.

‘There’s this book I love called The Future of Life by EO Wilson, about the environment. It’s basically aimed at business people who just think about infinite possibilities, infinite expansion – but the earth is limited! It’s very short term to think we can just accumulate and make as much as we can. If you wanna think longer-term economically, there are better ways.’

Alert, inquisitive, Natalie Portman likes to be stimulated. At Harvard she was tutored by – and became research assistant to – law professor Alan Dershowitz (famous outside academia for his role in the defence of Claus von Bulow). ‘She’s not one of those Hollywood stars who plays on her stardom to have you listen to her on other issues,’ he says. ‘She’s worth listening to because of her own inherent intelligence, experience and background.’