Students can help fight global poverty with a few clicks of a computer mouse through an online fund-raiser. The fifth annual Oxfam America Collegiate Click Drive, a national campaign founded and operated by Brandeis students that kicked off Monday, allows students to visit a Web site and click twice daily a link that makes a 25-cent donation by the campaign's sponsors.Over the past four years, the drive has raised over $100,000 to fund self-employment loans, or microloans, enabling the poor around the world, especially women, to start small businesses using local resources.

Contributions are made by sponsors who advertise on the Web site (www.povertyfighters.com). Oxfam America distributes the money to groups, or "collectives," of impoverished locals around the world in the form of small microloans, Campaign Coordinator Hannah Clark '09 said.

"It's a very small-scale way of starting a business," Clark said. "Instead of working in sweat shops or doing work that might be very harmful to them and take them away from their families. For example, if a woman gets a small loan to buy a cow, through that she can make cheese, she can make milk [and] she can then sell her products."

The drive, which runs through March 31, is primarily run by Brandeis students, though students nationwide now participate in the campaign. According to Senior Coordinator Marc Rotter '06, 102 schools have registered so far, and the campaign is on pace to surpass the total of 187 schools that participated last year.

The collectives in developing nations which benefit from the loans, are expected to pay the money back, but at very low interest rates, Rotter said. "The idea is to give credit to people who wouldn't otherwise have access to loans."

Senior Coordinator Ava Morgenstern '06 said another benefit of the drive is the formation of collectives in local regions to distribute the loans. She said the groups allow women in developing countries to escape the isolation of their domestic lifestyles. "Because they're living in pretty conservative contexts, it can get them out into public life," she said.

Morgenstern said the Internet-based strategy is particularly effective on college campuses. "The donations go through at no cost to the people clicking, which is why it works well with college students, because they don't have lots of money sitting around," she said.

Clark said the campaign also functions as a competition between schools. She said she has been looking into finding a possible prize for the winning school and has asked companies such as Global Marketplace and 10,000 Villages in Cambridge to donate. "It's difficult because it's hard to give a concrete prize when you don't know what school will win," she said. "We hope people will just have the incentive to fight poverty, and maybe there will be some mysterious prize."

The 2005 campaign raised $21,000. The University of St. Francis (Illinois) raised $2,814.50, which was the highest of any school, according to the Drive's Web site.

Clark and Morgenstern both noted the ease and simplicity of participating in the drive, as well as the positive impact of its results. "It's a really inspiring process. It empowers women," Clark said. "It's so easy, and it's a little thing you can do."

"This is a very effective way to make a big difference," Morgenstern said. "It's just two clicks a day; it takes five seconds, or less. It is incredibly effective in terms of giving women in poor countries a hands-up out of poverty.