In a small auditorium at Bechtel International Center last night, Sam Daley-Harris tried to motivate approximately 40 students to use their lives to make a difference in fighting against the social problems of today’s world.

“[This talk is] not about the 75 million children around the world who are not in primary school,” he said. “It’s about what we can do about it.”

Daley-Harris is director of Microcredit Summit Campaign (MCS) and founded RESULTS, a grassroots organization to combat poverty in the United States and around the globe.

His talk, entitled “Microloans to Thieves and other Revolutionary Acts that Demand Championing,” used microfinance as an example of how to make significant social change. The lecture rather rang as a motivational speech about the potential of grassroots movements to combat poverty and other social issues across the globe.

Daley-Harris explained that mortality could provide a nudge to spend life working to end problems that need to be solved. He even offered a rubric for students and people in general wondering what they can do to solve social problems.

“The first thing people can do is to stop believing there are no solutions,” he said. “The second is to stop believing that they cannot make any difference. The third is to stop thinking they have to act alone . . . The fourth thing people can do is to link to an organization that feeds you power . . . The fifth thing you can do is to nudge the organization to feed you more power.”

He spent much of the talk telling inspirational stories from some of his colleagues’ work, including Mohammad Yunus and Ingrid Monroe. The talk was named after Monroe, who lent money to gang members and thieves — who, in turn, ended up becoming successful, honest businessmen. Daley-Harris also recounted the founding story of Yunus’ Grameen bank.

The history, he explained, was necessary for the audience to be effective in creating change around the world.

“If you can’t tell a story like that, you aren’t dangerous yet. Until you’re articulate, it’s kind of useless, and you’re not dangerous to the issues of ignorance and apathy,” he explained.

Daley-Harris spoke to The Daily after the event and emphasized that his beginnings in the field of social entrepreneurship and microfinance were not conventional.

“My first job was as a teacher and a symphony musician,” he said.

He took on the problem of poverty after attending a lecture on ending world hunger, and spread that enthusiasm to a lecture on poverty he gave to high school classes around the Miami area.

He performed an exercise on the audience last night that he used with the high school students — he had everyone who knew their congressional representative stand up and tell the group. Twelve of the 40 people attending tonight’s event knew, and Daley-Harris said that of the high school students he had taught, 200 of 7,000 knew. This, he said, was the reason he got involved in social activism. However, there was no grand plan behind his efforts.

“It was a lot of trial and error, no plan, doing the next thing,” he said.

He eventually started a citizen lobby group on microfinance. It evolved over time into an impressive repertoire of social enterprises over the years, leading to his current involvement in the microcredit summit and RESULTS.

The event was hosted by Students for Engagement in Activism and Microfinance (SEAM) and co-sponsored by the ASSU Speakers Bureau, BASES and Fusion. SEAM is a small group on campus, consisting of a core of students interested in diving more deeply into microfinance.

“I was drawn to microfinance because it was the hot thing,” said co-president Nick Noone ‘10. “I had no idea what was going on behind the scenes . . . [We’re] educating ourselves. In a way, we’re passionate but naïve.”

Group members were happy with the turnout and with the talk.

“[Daley-Harris] is probably the biggest name in the U.S. [microfinance world]. We’re really lucky he came,” said group member Charles Huyi ’12.

Mitul Bhat ’12 came to the event out of interest in the microfinance issue, having previously attended other events like Mohammad Yunus’ visit last year and the Kiva founder Jessica Flannery’s talk fall quarter. Bhat said that microfinance “seems like an innovative and interesting new area.”

Daley-Harris also offered advice to students interested in getting involved in microfinance.

“Clarify your purpose in getting involved,” he said. “If it’s to make the hottest poverty-ending vehicle — go out into the field. See it up close and personal and not in the textbook only.”