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Can Microfinance Ignite a Good Governance Epidemic?
By serving as examples of effective corporate governance, microfinance providers could succeed where so many financial institutions have failed and in ’infect’ their client and community networks with the ’disease’ of strong corporate governance. With almost 3 billion unbanked people still to reach, those are huge potential networks to infect.
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- Uncategorized
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Going to See ’To Catch A Dollar’? Tell Us What You Think
Tonight - March 31 - and only tonight, the curtain will go up on the documentary, To Catch a Dollar, in movie theaters around the United States. The film documents the travels of Muhammad Yunus as the Nobel Laurate spreads the word on microfinance - not in Bangladesh, India or Asia - but here ... in America.
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NextThought: Quick Reflections from Harvard’s Social Enterprise Conference
The students of Harvard met and exceeded expectations at their annual Social Enterprise Conference through a healthy mix of panel discussions, hands-on workshops and a student-driven entrepreneurial spirit that was palpable in every hallway.
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- Finance, Social Enterprise
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Bananas Over Corporate Governance: The 2011 Banana Skins Survey
In the recently published Microfinance Banana Skins 2011, subtitled "Losing its fairy dust," the third annual survey polls microfinance practitioners, investors, analysts, regulators, and other experts on the top risks facing the industry worldwide. Corporate governance is ranked the fourth highest risk - up from seventh a year ago.
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NextThought Monday: How Can I Pay My Loans If I Can’t Afford an Onion?
Sure, one might argue that growing debts and high interest rates have lead to suicides in India and rising default rates. Perhaps you may even conclude that greed finally got the better of the MFIs. But when I visited Andhra Pradesh and almost couldn’t afford a watermelon, I gained a whole new perspective on the MFI crisis.
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- Finance
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- lending, microfinance
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In Haiti, the Fonkoze Model of Social Evolution – Part 2
Editor’s Note: This is the second in a two-part series on Fonkoze’s operations following last year’s earthquake in Haiti. New Fonkoze clients pay a one-time membership fee for life, and they quickly encounter an organization structure designed to communicate to them what a democratic institution looks like.
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In Haiti, the Fonkoze Model of Constant Evolution
At the time of the earthquake, during which 19,000 of its clients saw homes or businesses completely wiped away, Fonkoze had been developing a micro-insurance product as a long-term solution for disaster protection. In the immediate aftermath, the firm began collecting feedback to refine the micro-insurance product before brining it to market.
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- Impact Assessment
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- microfinance
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Financial Inclusion: Banking in the Amazon (With Video)
Autazes, a municipality in Brazil’s Amazon region, did not have a single point of access to banking services until 2002, when an agent set up operations there. Since then, Autazes has experienced significant economic and social changes, as the local population has access to government payments and other banking services for the first time.
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