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One Acre Fund Helps Africa’s Small Farmers Keep in Their Fields
The One Acre Fund provides access to microloans, training, insurance, and other hard-to-get help that boosts farmers' incomes and curbs flight from farms into cities.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- microfinance
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Economists Demonstrate One Size Does Not Fit All for Microfinance Programs
New Study Reveals Wide Variance in Results from Thai Million Baht Village FundLarge-scale microfinance programs are widely used as a tool to fight poverty in developing countries, but a recent study from the Consortium on Financial Systems and Poverty suggests that they can have varying results for participants and may be the most cost-effective use of funds only in limited situations.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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Facebook-style Microcredit Site Helps China Farmers
BEIJING: Dairy farmer Deligeerma needs 642 to buy fodder for her cows during the harsh winter months in northern China. So far, she has received 149 in pledges from four people around the world.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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Tara Thiagarajan Wants the Poor to Get More Out of Their Micro Borrowings
Tara Thiagarajan believes that microfinance institutions (MFIs) have been pursuing the wrong goal. Instead of scale, they should be looking to make loans more effective. That means borrowers should get more out of their borrowings. Along with credit, they should also get the tools and the benefits of a large network to make the most of the credit.
- Categories
- Education
- Region
- South Asia
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What Went Wrong with Microfinance?
Long before “99%” became a symbol of Occupy Wall Street, the microfinance industry used the number to describe the share of its clients — poor entrepreneurs shunned by traditional banks — who repaid their micro-loans on time. It’s a number used less and less in microfinance these days — not because of Occupy Wall Street, but because many micro-borrowers are starting to default.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
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Interest-free Microfinance Hope for Poor Muslims
Making headlines in the recent past for crushing interest rates claiming lives of debtors, microfinance is now being offered with a more humane approach. The Human Welfare Foundation will now offer loans in the form of interest-free microfinance to the poor across the country including Hyderabad, said vice president of Jamat-e-Islami Hind Prof K A Siddique Hassan here on Saturday.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
- Region
- South Asia
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IFC To Start $100M Microfinance Debt Fund
International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector investment arm of the World Bank Group, along with two other investors, will set up a $100 million debt fund called Micro Finance Initiative for Asia (MIFA), to address the funding needs of microfinance institutions in developing and underdeveloped economies.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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Using Microfinance to Bring Clean Water to India’s Poor
A unique public-private partnership involving private sector giants like Unilever and Heinz is improving the health of Indian children. Two hours outside India's tech hub Bangalore is Krishnagiri the Integrated Village Development Project (IVDP) is using interest-free microfinance loans to increase access to products people could not afford on their own.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- South Asia
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